Who are you supporting in the upcoming American election

[sentry103]

i'm so glad all the political hoo raa is almost over.... just a few more hours.

[Zero]

Politics is never over. :lol:

[KarlvB]

Good points Zero, and I do agree with a lot of them....

I admit that I did oversimplify the point somewhat to try and draw some distinction between who is being benefited by each tax policy, and that the Republican view of cutting the taxes of the wealthy is a bit counterintuitive when they have seen such massive gains in wealth....

Moreover, in my view the concept of "wealth distribution" as used campaign speeches in the election campaign is somewhat misleading.

No one is arguing for a socialist model. Instead the argument is about reducing the taxes of those who earn less...the people who have seen their wages stagnate......to try and give them a fairer deal while giving tax breaks to those companies that do invest in their workforce....whether this be through job creation or providing training for new skills.....

In my view it is primarily about allowing a more equal distribution of the economic benefits generated and channeling the money into better education (training), healthcare and public services for all people.

[Steel Blue 91]

Politics is never over. :lol:

Zero,

You are (unfortunately) correct.

<big sigh>

[RobsanX]

I just got home from voting at the Village Hall. I put my ballot in the machine and the stupid thing didn't give me any CHANGE!!! :roll: :wink: :lol:

[Slydel]

Socialism is not a fair system by any means. It is not the best system of government. People are so happy in their socialist countries because everyone has a a safety net. Yet this does not completely answer why socialist countries are so happy. This is not all bad mind you, but it is taken advantage of by many lazy people. Same as it is taken advantage of in a republic, yet there are more social programs available to hoodwink. If all the people are "taken care of", even people that have the means of supporting themselves but choose not to, showing that soc. is not a fair form of government because it is taking care of the poor while penalizing the rich, who by this point are not very rich anymore. The average person is much happier because there is such a disproportionate number of poor people that are happy that they are being "taken care of". No wonder everybody is, on average, so much happier than those of a republic. This is fine, if the people vote for the changes to a socialistic government themselves, but they don't. The representatives screw them by voting for social programs. Why do I need to take care of people that don't I give a shit about and that don't give a shit about themselves except their own immediate needs?

[Premium Parrots]

I suppose the intellectual argument against wealth redistribution is rooted in the tenets of free-market economics. I'll be first in line to say that McCain is a nutcase, but on wealth redistribution I, at least in principle, agree that it's a bad idea.

The problem is that socialist measures like wealth redistribution schemes completely ignore several uncomfortable economic realities. The problem with declining wages in the US has nothing to do with rich people screwing over poor people - at least not directly. It's not as though everyone continued in their job from the year before but suddenly made less money. The reason that wages are dropping in the US is that employment in the US is shifting to lower-skill, lower-value work. People are losing "good" jobs - high-paying jobs - and are ending up working in places like WalMart or as mobile phone contract hockers, etc.

So the rich in America continue to get rich because their business is generally big-ticket stuff and because, increasingly, a lot of their money is made overseas. Big infrastructure consultants and contractors, the military-industrial complex, bankers, and other global/corporate type entities are doing more and more business on overseas contracts, and even smaller consumer-level companies are moving their manufacturing to cheaper shores.

The bottom line is that middle-class America is simply not producing what it used to, now being generally employed in lower-skill, lower productivity jobs. To suggest that the way to fix this is for successful and large businesses to subsidise the living of the nation is a bit silly because it doesn't fix the underlying problem of underproduction. All it does is make the cost of doing business in America proportionately higher to pay for the wages that the populace "feels they deserve" for the work they are doing. This may succeed in making the rich poorer, and may even drive them away from America, but it certainly can't make the poor richer. At least not in any meaningful and lasting way.

Essentially, unskilled labour, which was a LOT of what the US was built on, has been cheapened by competition from developing countries. In an ideal world, where market access was universal and where living conditions were relatively uniform, a Chinese worker and an American worker would be paid essentially the same thing for doing the same job because they would be competing with the same skills. Their physical requirements for living - a house/space, food, education for kids, car, etc, would all be similar, and so they would command similar salaries. With the global market opening to labour competition, though, this is far from the case. This is because a Chinese man is content to live with a lot less than an American man is willing to live on. So long as there is someone willing to do a shitty job for cheaper than you, then he will get the job. There's no logical or fair reason to say that an American man who has a low skill level should have his income supplemented by local enterprise to some arbitrary level. What of the Chinese man, then? Why does he not deserve more money? Surely if we are happy to buy a product made by a man paid such low wages, we should be equally ok with buying the same product made by an American for equally low wages. Where do we justify paying the American more? How does he deserve more? The Chinese have been working their arses off, en-masse, for years now making products for the US market. That money has to come from somewhere - someone had to pay them. The US, conversely, has been producing less because China has been doing it for them. They've paid the Chinese, but sacked their own workforce doing it. To me it's not a problem to be solved, but simply a matter of cause and effect. The US is making what it deserves to make - less - because they have been producing less. This is economics working correctly.

The economics have to add up. Globalisation is causing growing pains. People who have profited passively behind aggresive empires are now having to face the reality that the developing world is growing up and that they won't just roll over and be slaves any more. This increases the price of goods and labour everywhere it was artificially low (somewhere like China) while reducing the price of labour in places where it was artificially high (like the US). For the sake of a healthy future global economy, it is imperative that this process of correction be allowed to happen. Being fair doesn't mean being nice to everyone, it means paying people for what they do and not paying people for what they don't do. If middle-class america wants more money, then they need to find new ways to make it. They need to start producing again. So long as there are continued government interventions to keep people well-paid when there is a production crisis going on, then the problem will never be solved. Correctly low wages, on the other hand, as determined by market forces, can be a powerful motivator to the establishment of new investment and new industry.

...my two bits

hey I was just gonna post that!!! :wink:

[Jason]

Politics is never over. :lol:

It's like death and taxes.... :wink:

[spirit72]

I'm sure everyone's watching anyhow, but NBC, ABC, CBS, and even Fox News have called the election for Sen. Obama.

[airwoodstock]

I'm sure everyone's watching anyhow, but NBC, ABC, CBS, and even Fox News have called the election for Sen. Obama.

The BBC as well. 297 Electoral votes to 145.

[Harry]

Zero,

Why do you have a preference?

Of all the people in this discussion, you have obviously completed the most independent research. What you have found, to over-simplify, is that politics and the role of our president in global affairs, is something that little to no one can grasp.

It is exponentially more complicated than even our most informed voters could ever imagine.

Do you really think that BO would make these nation-altering decisions any differently than any other candidate? With all information only allowed to he and a select group of consultants?

To be knowledgeable of a few of the travesties each and every government involves themselves with, and still have a preference between Chuck and Brent seems inconsistent.

We can only control our locale. We cannot control the globalization or the raging influence our country will have by selecting a president.

I know you don't believe that we found one candidate that has truly altruistic intentions for the world in his new seat. Those such people do not exist outside of Tibet.

[Zero]

^ I'm not quite sure what you're asking or what your point is.

[RobsanX]

It's really starting to scare me how people are worshiping Obama... Look people, he's just a man, not the freaking second coming...

[lxskllr]

Look people, he's just a man, not the freaking second coming...

Compared to Bush he is :^P

[airwoodstock]

The really scary part is how the younger generation is reacting. Let me define the "Younger Generation". I'm 42 so, the generation after me and my daughter's generation (teenagers).

I had a guy working for me (26 yr old) that was obsessed with Obama. Would take days off just to go to rallys and do voluntary work for him. He was so enamored by Obama that, he had his hair cut to mimic him. He was a great guy and, highly educated. He left in May to go to California and finish his degree at CalArts. Even there, he still did alot of voluntary work for him and, would design stuff for the Campagin headquarters there. Maybe it's my age but, most of the people that work for me are in the 18 to 30 year old bracket and every one of them were mesmorized by Obama. I just don't see it. I'm on the web just as much as they are and, read pretty much the same things they do but, could never see what they saw that would get them in such a frenzy over him.

The kids at my daughter's high school did a mock election and, Obama won with 98% of the popular vote. When I was my daughter's age, during an election year, I was more worried about which girl I was going to ask out and, how I was going to get my dad to let me use the car to take her out.

Anyway, being a history buff, I'm beginning to see some things that I'm having concerns about but, just can't put my finger on just yet. It'll be interesting to see how the next 75 days play out with President Elect Obama.

/end babble/