Americans Paid $90 Billion MORE In Taxes After Republican Tax Cut

[Flash]

But you don't know who those people are, and you can never know! You insist it's true, but provide nothing but anecdotes that you also refuse to verify. So you say government spending that serves no useful purpose, but the definition of "useful purpose" is subjective and ever-changing. You are trying to establish your own shitty judgment as the standard, but no one gave you that entitlement. Everything you're saying here is filtered through the prism of your bias, which we all know is against the institutions of government. So there is no bar that government can meet that will satisfy you because of the fake personal standards you set and then adjust depending on how your argument is faring at any given time.

There are many ways to know. Financial aid calls and asks you if a certain student is attending class, students beg you for passing grades because they will "lose" their grant, you call financial aid and ask (faculty have legal access to student records), students tell you they are on a grant, you call the student to check on them if they stop attending class to see if they have some problem and they tell you they only enrolled to get the grant money, a student who never studies or passes cries in your office because they need the grant to be a full-time student because her mother said she had to be enrolled full-time to be covered under the mother's health insurance, etc. At a typical community college about 50% of students get grants so the chances are pretty high. And many other examples that are learned after 40 years in higher education that cannot be explained in message board posts to someone with no clue how the system works.

Right...it's always the same story from people like you; you think you can do it better, so you end up voting for people who share your point of view, only to find out that they don't, can't, and/or won't "do it better" because like you, they have an inherent bias against the government that prods them to view it negatively in any circumstance because government is merely a reflection of all of us, and you hate society because it won't indulge your unearned entitlement. Like for instance, setting a standard of "wasteful" that is neither a standard, nor something that you set. It's a bar you move continually in order to post-hoc your argument into better shape. That's why everything you say is always vague and ambiguous. You leave yourself room to wiggle within the parameters. Total bad faith.

You are saying the same thing--you think we would be doing it "better" if we had free college, free healthcare, forgive student debt. I am not biased against government spending, I am biased against government waste and unproductive spending while you think if government is spending money it must be for a good purpose with no regard to whether the program accomplishes its goals or end up with most benefits going to those providing the services (colleges, hospitals, doctors,

What do you even mean here? How are agencies "rewarded" for spending more? What is the reward? They're not operated for profit, so what are you even talking about? Should people not be rewarded for doing their jobs effectively? Should those people not be paid at all?

They get more money in their budget for getting more clients. Rewarding people for doing their jobs effectively is good only if those rewards serve a productive purpose. Enrolling more students knowing many have no chance at success increases the college's budget.

The military officer who is rewarded for giving out more contracts without regard to whether those contracts are ever completed is meeting the goals of the agency (spending more money) but is wasting taxpayer money. Government agencies never want to have money left at the end of the fiscal year because they fear they will get less the next year and they engage in a "spring spending spree" to spend any remaining money.

If you get a salary increase, bonus, or more travel money that is not "profit" but it benefits you financially.

So Pell Grant students have to keep their grades up. The "loophole to enrollment" has nothing to do with the requirements to maintain averages...how are the two connected? You should have used a semicolon in that sentence because as it is currently written, it is incoherent.

Of course it does. If I am required to maintain a C average but have an F average I am not supposed to keep getting my grant. But the law says, for example, that I can still qualify for the grant if I change majors. The point is I can keep getting my grant even if I do not make passing grades.

Or, if I am below 23(?) years old I have to include my parent's salary in my eligibility qualifications even if I do not live at home and receive any financial assistance from them. An exception is if I have a dependent. My step-daughter qualified by claiming her boyfriend was her dependent because he chose not to work and she provided over 50% of their support.

Why do those schools have empty spaces in the first place? Because students can't afford the costs. So if public colleges were free, just like public schools, then enrollment would increase and enrollment at private schools would decrease.

No, that is a silly assumption. Colleges don't have masses of students who want to take classes but can't afford it. Colleges spend a lot of time and money trying to recruit students to go to their school. There are night classes offered to serve working students but they are usually smaller than day classes. It might be at an unpopular time--8:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m. There are many reasons unrelated to cost. A student who does not want an 8:00 class might be willing to take it if it was a way to get free college and that eliminates those students enrolling just to get their grant money.

 

[LV426]

There are many ways to know. Financial aid calls and asks you if a certain student is attending class, students beg you for passing grades because they will "lose" their grant, you call financial aid and ask (faculty have legal access to student records), students tell you they are on a grant, you call the student to check on them if they stop attending class to see if they have some problem and they tell you they only enrolled to get the grant money, a student who never studies or passes cries in your office because they need the grant to be a full-time student because her mother said she had to be enrolled full-time to be covered under the mother's health insurance, etc. At a typical community college about 50% of students get grants so the chances are pretty high. And many other examples that are learned after 40 years in higher education that cannot be explained in message board posts to someone with no clue how the system works.

Student records, including financial records? No. That information isn't shared by the bursar or registrar or financial aid office with you, even if you ask for it. The reason is as I stated before, it is unethical. Someone choosing to divulge their information to you is not the same thing as you soliciting that information. That's my point.

You are saying the same thing--you think we would be doing it "better" if we had free college, free healthcare, forgive student debt. I am not biased against government spending, I am biased against government waste and unproductive spending while you think if government is spending money it must be for a good purpose with no regard to whether the program accomplishes its goals or end up with most benefits going to those providing the services (colleges, hospitals, doctors,

The problem is, you set "wasteful" as a moving bar that you adjust depending on how your argument is faring. It also allows you wiggle room later on for you to more narrow down a point you should have already narrowed down. That's just laziness. Secondly, if we had free public college and single payer health care, household debt would decline and personal savings would increase since student loan and medical debt make up the largest total share of all debt, combined. Medical bills are the largest share of bankruptcy, and student loan debt is larger than credit card debt. Single payer and free public college/debt forgiveness would ease the two biggest debt drags we face.

 

[LV426]

They get more money in their budget for getting more clients. Rewarding people for doing their jobs effectively is good only if those rewards serve a productive purpose. Enrolling more students knowing many have no chance at success increases the college's budget.

So they get bigger budgets so they can spend more to expand the program...and this is a problem, why?

You seem to be implying that for every dollar more a department or agency spends, they get an increase in their payroll budget, and that's just crazy talk.

You're saying the program is wasteful because it delivers on what it's supposed to do, thus justifying larger budgets.

 

[LV426]

The military officer who is rewarded for giving out more contracts without regard to whether those contracts are ever completed is meeting the goals of the agency (spending more money) but is wasting taxpayer money. Government agencies never want to have money left at the end of the fiscal year because they fear they will get less the next year and they engage in a "spring spending spree" to spend any remaining money.

We aren't talking about the military, and the way the government operates Medicare has nothing to do with how it rewards military contracts. Under M4A, what contracts are being rewarded? It's a single payer, so there's no contracts.

 

[LV426]

If you get a salary increase, bonus, or more travel money that is not "profit" but it benefits you financially.

So if the program is successful, the people running it shouldn't get raises and/or bonuses? So what's the incentive to work there?

 

[Flash]

So this is a very cynical, John Delaney-approach to governance; the game of "well it doesn't matter because it'll never happen anyway" is a nice trick to avoid discussing the actual program as it is proposed. You don't seem to want to do that, choosing instead to make a bad faith prediction, based on your shit judgment and inherent bias. The reason you won't address the actual proposal is because you know if it did go through as proposed, it would work and make sense. Thus, undermining your inherent bias and causing you to be embarrassed. So that's why you almost never have a good faith discussion around anything; you've cast yourself as a contrarian when you're really just lazy and scared.

It is not necessarily cynical. A member of Congress may think it is only fair if the historically black private college in their district which is having financial problems should be included in that free tuition. Those students probably need the help more than somebody from an upper income family attending UCLA. That college may be an important part of the economic picture in that small town but it will close and all those college employees will lose their jobs plus the town merchants who rely on student money.

Those schools and members of Congress have a legitimate argument that they should be entitled to free college just as much as public schools. The students and their families pay taxes just like the public school students.

Have you ever seen any major legislation pass Congress that did not include major changes? During the 2008 nomination debates Obama was against mandates for health insurance but accepted that plus many other changes in the law.

I did not make a bad faith prediction--polls show Sanders unlikely to win the nomination. I'm just being realistic. I'm sure the Republicans are making a campaign ad showing all the Democrats at the debates raising their hands saying they favored free healthcare for illegal aliens.

 

[Flash]

So if the program is successful, the people running it shouldn't get raises and/or bonuses? So what's the incentive to work there?

Sure they should. But it should be for making sure the contractor actually builds the structure for which you gave him a $1 million contract, it is completed, it includes all the required essentials, and is safe and inhabitable.

Rewarding that officer for the number of contracts he issues without regard for performance is a poor way to run government and wastes all that government revenue you think is so important for them to have.

 

[Flash]

Student records, including financial records? No. That information isn't shared by the bursar or registrar or financial aid office with you, even if you ask for it. The reason is as I stated before, it is unethical. Someone choosing to divulge their information to you is not the same thing as you soliciting that information. That's my point.

The problem is, you set "wasteful" as a moving bar that you adjust depending on how your argument is faring. It also allows you wiggle room later on for you to more narrow down a point you should have already narrowed down. That's just laziness. Secondly, if we had free public college and single payer health care, household debt would decline and personal savings would increase since student loan and medical debt make up the largest total share of all debt, combined. Medical bills are the largest share of bankruptcy, and student loan debt is larger than credit card debt. Single payer and free public college/debt forgiveness would ease the two biggest debt drags we face.

That is a good assumption if you don't know how things work. The school can release data it if has an "educational purpose."

If a student has never attended my class I might decide to drop them after a few weeks because I don't want to give that student and F at the end of the semester. So I call them to let them know in case they may be sick or have some special problem. They then beg me not to drop them because they will lose their Pell Grant.

That is one simple example of how I know. Are you suggesting that is the only student?

Soon, the school would not let me drop them because they wanted to make sure they got the state money and because "course completion" was a factor in school funding and an "F" was a completion of the class but a drop was not.

That is a great example of waste. The student got 0 educational benefits and got an F which could affect them if they ever decided to continue their college education, the state got ripped off because it had to pay for that student and the federal government got ripped off because it gave the student a grant with no educational benefits.

I did not set any bar for waste much less a moving bar. Waste is waste and it is all bad.

 

[Getin the ring]

If the tax cut "lets people keep more of what they earn", how come consumer debt is at an all-time record high?

The average American has $38,000 in debt — a quarter of which comes directly from credit card charges. In December 2018, consumer debt overall hit a record high $4 trillion.

Your shitty tax cut went into effect January 2nd, 2018.

So after 12 months of a tax cut that "let you keep more of what you earn", most people are deeper in debt.

So your tax cut didn't let people keep more of what they earned...instead, they went into more debt.

Personal savings also dropped, so quite literally, people aren't "keeping more of what they earn".

you really ARE retarded aren't you.

 

[Flash]

People aren't going into debt because they're buying new cars (auto sales ain't that great).

They're going into debt because of health care and education costs.

Auto loans aren't even the top 3 when it comes to most common debt; that's credit card debt, student loan debt, and medical debt.

Buying a car does not have to be a major cause a debt. If a person has more disposable income he might choose to use that additional income to buy a car. So, in his case, the additional debt is not a bad thing but the cost of having a new car. If he has student loan, medical, or credit card debt let's hope he will use that additional income to pay on those debts.

The point is that consumer spending and disposable income have been increasing so your claim that people don't have more money to spend is a lie. Spending it on student loan debt is a good way to pay for the debt a person chose to incur.

 

[Flash]

We aren't talking about the military, and the way the government operates Medicare has nothing to do with how it rewards military contracts. Under M4A, what contracts are being rewarded? It's a single payer, so there's no contracts.

We were talking about government waste and you wanted examples.

 

[Flash]

So they get bigger budgets so they can spend more to expand the program...and this is a problem, why?

You seem to be implying that for every dollar more a department or agency spends, they get an increase in their payroll budget, and that's just crazy talk.

You're saying the program is wasteful because it delivers on what it's supposed to do, thus justifying larger budgets.

I never implied anything close to that. You make simplistic assumptions that do not reflect anything I said. I said getting more clientele increases their budget. Expanding their programs is good for the agency, but not necessarily for the taxpayer. It depends on whether an expanded program produces necessary benefits desired by the taxpayers. Using an increased budget to enlarge your office and buy new furniture because it is desirable to the occupant is not beneficial to the taxpayer.

 

[LV426]

you really ARE retarded aren't you.

Keeping more of your own money = going into debt

Only in bizarro world.

 

[LV426]

It is not necessarily cynical. A member of Congress may think it is only fair if the historically black private college in their district which is having financial problems should be included in that free tuition. Those students probably need the help more than somebody from an upper income family attending UCLA. That college may be an important part of the economic picture in that small town but it will close and all those college employees will lose their jobs plus the town merchants who rely on student money.

Well, see, because you're lazy, you didn't bother to ask or even look to see if Warren and/or Sanders had an HBCU plan...turns out they do.

If some rich kid wants to go to UCLA because his/her family doesn't want to pay higher tuition fees at USC, that's a problem, why? Rich kids go to public school all the time. Not everyone who is rich has their kids attend private school. In fact, most rich kids go to public school. So if they want to go to public college, why shouldn't it be free for them as K-12 was?

 

[LV426]

Those schools and members of Congress have a legitimate argument that they should be entitled to free college just as much as public schools. The students and their families pay taxes just like the public school students.

Right, and they can send their kids to public school, or they can choose to pay and send their kids to private schools. So...what is the "legitimate argument"? Merely that you pay taxes isn't enough of an argument. We all pay taxes. Think of something better.

 

[LV426]

Have you ever seen any major legislation pass Congress that did not include major changes? During the 2008 nomination debates Obama was against mandates for health insurance but accepted that plus many other changes in the law.

Medicare.

Medicaid.

Obama had to accept those changes because he had Conservatives to deal with in his own caucus. This gets back to what I said before about not voting for those people. So you have a real rhetorical dilemma you face in your argument here; you argue that these plans will "get changed" by corporatists in Congress, yet you vote for corporatists who do that.

So how are you not to blame? You say "oh this legislation will get changed because of corporate interests; so I'm going to support the corporate candidate who I am attacking for changing proposals and programs, which I predict". So really, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe the way to get the change we want is to stop voting for the same people over and over. Or maybe, to get the change we want, we just stop accommodating people like you. I like that better. I like to make you feel like you're not the smartest, most important, most respectful person in the space. You have an entitlement where you think we must make you comfortable by accommodating your bad faith. I'm proposing something radical; we stop giving a shit what people like you think and concentrate instead on the 45% of people who didn't vote, but could for a program like M4A, student debt forgiveness, and a Green New Deal.

 

[LV426]

II did not make a bad faith prediction--polls show Sanders unlikely to win the nomination. I'm just being realistic. I'm sure the Republicans are making a campaign ad showing all the Democrats at the debates raising their hands saying they favored free healthcare for illegal aliens.

You did make a bad faith prediction, and you did it instead of debating the actual proposal. The reason you don't want to debate the actual proposal is because doing so will result in you agreeing with the proposal. And that would mean everything you said against the proposal was just a load of horseshit, and frankly, I don't believe you are adult enough to admit that.

And why shouldn't illegal immigrants get free healthcare? What makes them illegal is an arbitrary law that didn't exist when my ancestors came here. So you don't want them coming here, so you criminalize the means by which most of them do, and that makes it easy for you to justify treating them inhumanely.

And who gives a shit what Republicans say? They voted for and support Trump; they're written off. They're not the people we are counting on to vote for us, and they never were.

 

[LV426]

Sure they should. But it should be for making sure the contractor actually builds the structure for which you gave him a $1 million contract, it is completed, it includes all the required essentials, and is safe and inhabitable.

Explain to me where the contractor comes in with Medicare for All, cuz I don't see it and it isn't in any of the proposals from Sanders or Warren. In fact, both of them abolish private insurance, so...who would be the contractors in a single payer, government-run system?

And again, you speak in vague generalities and ambiguities. Nothing you say here is of any substance.

 

[LV426]

ewarding that officer for the number of contracts he issues without regard for performance is a poor way to run government and wastes all that government revenue you think is so important for them to have.

So explain to me where the contracts are being issued in a single payer system?

Explain to me where the contracts are being issued in a free public college proposal?

What are you talking about? The government runs M4A; the government runs public colleges. Who are the contractors? What are you fucking talking about, weirdo?

 

[LV426]

That is a good assumption if you don't know how things work. The school can release data it if has an "educational purpose."

Ah, so another vague, ambiguous goalpost you are shifting.

What "educational purpose" could come from you soliciting confidential information on your students other than unethically changing how you educate them because of your bias?

I'm not saying you were probably a shitty professor, but it sure seems like it.

If a student has never attended my class I might decide to drop them after a few weeks because I don't want to give that student and F at the end of the semester. So I call them to let them know in case they may be sick or have some special problem. They then beg me not to drop them because they will lose their Pell Grant.

OK, but you implied before that you could just dial up the student aid office and solicit this information. So your argument has shifted. Before, you said that you could find out the financial information on your students (which sounds made up, frankly), but now you're saying that they're volunteering that information to you. You see the difference?

Are you suggesting that is the only student?

What you were saying earlier was that you could find out any student's financial information. But what you're saying now is that "finding out" that information is actually people voluntarily giving you that info unsolicited. That's a huge difference and massive goalpost shift in your bad faith argument.

Soon, the school would not let me drop them because they wanted to make sure they got the state money and because "course completion" was a factor in school funding and an "F" was a completion of the class but a drop was not.

And this was a private school, wasn't it? I don't give a shit about private schools. Public schools are what we are talking about making free, and if you make public schools free, none of the students who go there need Pell Grants. In fact, we can eliminate the Pell Grant program entirely because, as you say, why subsidize private schools when we have a perfectly good public option?

Waste is waste and it is all bad.

"Waste" is subjective, and what you're doing is trying to establish your broad standard of "waste", very lazily, as the general standard. But it's not. There is no standard because it's subjective. You judge things as wasteful because you don't see the personal benefit, because you're a selfish, lazy asshole and a sociopath who only cares about himself, and who lacks basic human empathy. You're basically a monster.