G5000's Plan For Economic Prosperity And Better Cable Reception

g5000

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Nov 26, 2011
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Apparently some people are tragically confused about where I am on the political spectrum. So I thought I would consolidate my larger political beliefs into one topic and let the dice fall where they may.

This OP will necessarily be long as I intend to point to it in the future when some fool assumes my political orientation.

You are free to tl;dr this OP and continue to bear false witness against me, but you will always know you are lying and so will everyone else.

I have never understood why some people throw away their integrity so cheaply just to score a momentary, fake political point.

Sometimes your integrity is all you have, folks. It matters. It really, really matters.

Okay, here we go.

1. Abortion. I'm pro-life. It's right there in my signature. I believe this issue has been hijacked by the extremists on both sides. Even though I try to remain calm and collected when talking about abortion, I find myself feeling pushed to the right wing extreme when debating the pro-choice extremists. I think a lot of moderate reasonable people on either side of the issue feel that same compulsion.

So here's the deal. Even though America is split about 50-50 when asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice, it turns out when you ask them specifically about second trimester abortions, a supermajority of Americans are opposed. This means a lot of people who call themselves pro-choice actually have personal beliefs which are in direct opposition to Roe v. Wade which allows abortions on demand all the way to the end of the second trimester.

abortion-trimester-poll.jpg



This extremist-dominated fight has been going on for half a century, with the needle barely moving.

And over the past decade or more, I said many, many times the repeal of Roe V. Wade would have ZERO impact on the number of abortions in America, though I believe for moral reasons that it should be repealed.

Astronomical amounts of energy have been wasted on a zero-sum game.

So what should we do?

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, about half of all abortions are the result of no birth control being used during the sex act which led to the unwanted pregnancy.

HALF!

Another fifth are due to the improper or inconsistent use of birth control.

So just imagine what the result would be if we devoted all that tremendous energy toward getting people to use birth control and use it correctly and consistently.

I believe we would see a dramatic drop in the number of abortions.

And this is a middle ground upon which sane moderate pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet.

This is but one of many issues which there are forces in our country who are doing everything they can to keep us all at each other's throats, though. Someone wants us divided so we can be conquered.

The pro-life extremists are getting more and more sadistic and cruel in their fight against abortion, and it is turning people off. Every pro-abortion measure on the ballot this year succeeded, even in the red states.

I will not go into the profound dark spiritual forces which I believe are at work here.


2. Taxes. Hate 'em! I don't even like that YOU have to pay taxes.

But what I hate most is the ridiculous amount of exemptions, credits, and deductions which are proven to tilt the legislative playing field upward, concentrating wealth up the food chain. I am very much in favor of people who invent a better mouse trap accumulating vast amounts of wealth. They earned it. But I am deeply opposed to the unnatural concentration of wealth.

Every dollar returned to someone in the form of a deduction, exemption, or credit has to be offset. This is done by taking money from someone else's pocket in the form of higher tax rates. This is the greatest wealth redistribution socialist program in history. It is also the worst kind of government interference in the markets. Your home costs an average of 27 percent more because of the mortgage interest deduction, so you are not getting ahead as much as you think you are.

So who's making bank on the mortgage interest deduction? Well, if your houses costs more, you have to pay your realtor more and you have to borrow more from the bank.

Bingo-bango, wealth redistribution up the food chain and massive government interference in the housing market.

That's just one example crammed inside the $1.4 trillion of government deductions, exemptions, and credits each year.

That's $1.4 trillion each year which has to come from your pockets in the form of higher tax rates or by borrowing from China or other investors.

What we have, folks, is an insane system where two people earning identical incomes are paying radically different amounts in taxes!

You are punished with higher taxes for not borrowing money! You are punished with higher taxes for not breeding or breeding less than you neighbors! You are punished with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of refrigerator which some company bribed our elected officials to put in the tax code.

So it was no big leap for Obama to punish you with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of health insurance.

If we eliminated all this socialist wealth redistribution and government interference, we could radically lower tax rates across the board for EVERYONE.

By the way, this political position of mine is a core libertarian principle.

3. Taxes II. Income taxes are a punitive tax on production. I hate 'em! A flat income tax is STILL a punitive tax on production.

There is no magical quality in a flat income tax which prohibits the exact same $1.4 trillion of exemptions, deductions, and credits.

That's a big secret, but you deserve to know.

What this means is that it would be required to raise the flat income tax rate ever higher to offset the $1.4 trillion of deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Most economists agree that a consumption tax is superior and healthier for the economy. I agree, which is why I favor the FAIR Tax.


A flat tax is regressive. It's great for the rich, but it really schlongs the middle class and poor.

The Fair Tax is a kind of sales tax. But since sales taxes are also regressive, the Fair Tax has a prebate built into it.

Everyone gets the exact same prebate amount. To the rich, it's not even lunch money, but to the working poor it can be the difference between starvation and survival.

The Fair Tax also does not have any magical quality which prevents exemptions. Therefore, for every exemption the Fair Tax will have to be raised to offset them.

What's great about the Fair Tax, though, is that everyone immediately notices a tax increase. If you ask everyone you know how much they paid in income taxes from year to year, they would be unable to tell you. They remember what their REFUND was, but they really didn't look at their total tax bill and compare it to previous years.

Just ask your friends and see if I'm right.

But you can't hide a tax hike in the FAIR tax. It is immediately noticed.

Therefore, if the special interests manage to get the leading edge a wedge of exemptions (say, for milk) passed through Congress, everyone will personally feel the result when the FAIR Tax is raised to offset those exemptions. It will therefore be extremely difficult to get exemptions passed.

There is a significant drawback to the FAIR Tax which I won't go into as I have not come up with a solid solution yet.


Or...instead of the FAIR Tax as our consumption tax, we could take a look at Value Added Taxes. Another time, maybe.

In any case, a consumption tax should SUPPLANT the income tax, not SUPPLEMENT it.

Oh, and get this. If you take away the ability of congresscritters to sneak deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, you just took away the incentive for special interest to give them campaign cash in exhange for those tax gifts.

TA-DAAA! You just reformed campaign finance! For real this time.

In all the decades of court decisions, Congressional legislation, and every other effort to reform campaign finance, the money flowing into politics has SKYROCKETED.

That's because the more power we take from the states and centralize at the federal level, the easier you make it to capture that power.

Take away the power to cram $1.4 trillion of giveaways in the tax code, and presto, campaign cash dwindles to a trickle. And this will give challengers to incumbents a fighting chance.

Which is why our politicians will give up that power when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.

Think about this. I do. A lot.




4. Welfare. Here I wander off the libertarian reservation a little bit. But maybe not as much as you might think.

There are some heartless people on the Right who would end all welfare and let our poor sink or swim. The fact is, they would sink.

The poor are not lazy, despite what the echo chamber propagandists pushing their confirmation bias to the limit would have you believe.

Sure, there are people who cheat the system, but they are the exception which prove the rule.

How do I know this? Just walk through a ghetto and see if you smell the odor of boiling lobster or sizzling steaks wafting through the air. Even better, volunteer in the ghetto and get to know these people.

Anyone you see with any kind of "eminence front" going on probably acquired their goods through crime. Poverty breeds crime.

No, the real problem, in my opinion, is the ridiculous number of welfare programs. And for each welfare program, you have to jump through a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to qualify. It's just plain stupid. Misguided compassion has led to a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

These compoundingly dissipative programs are not lifting people out of poverty. They are actually a poverty trap. The only people making out are the social workers drawing down a paycheck. Not that they are paid well. They are actually wonderful people working their asses off to help their fellow man.

But the administrators above them are making bank.

So what am I saying? Would I end all welfare programs?

Yes. Yes I would.

Before any heartless bastards applaud me, let me quickly add I would replace all those welfare programs with a single one.

Milton Friedman's "negative income tax".






So you see, I have not really wandered off the libertarian platform. :)

Someone, I forget who, has Thomas Sowell as their avatar. Check out the first video. :D



5. Entitlement Programs. Let's face it. We are stuck with Social Security and Medicare. I say "stuck" as if I oppose them. I don't.

However, we are living much longer than our ancestors did. Decades longer. It is insane and unsustainable that we start drawing from the national treasury at the same age they did.

We are living longer, we should be working longer. This is just plain common sense.

When Social Security was established in 1935, only 5.7 percent of the US population was over 65. The average American was not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security. SS was for the outliers. The actuarials were against you, especially if you were a blue collar worker.

Most Americans died with their boots on.

By 1965, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. This is the year Medicare was introduced to our entitlement package.

Today, 16 percent of Americans are over 65. Over the past 87 years, we have had a larger and larger percentage of the population drawing from the national treasury for longer and longer periods, while being supported by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

As I said, this is insane and unsustainable.

The retirement age should be indexed to an actuarial.

It so happens that 9 percent of our population is over the age of 70. The same percentage which was over 65 when Medicare was introduced.

I propose we raise the eligibility age to 70, and index it to 9 percent of the population going forward.

If one day there was a zombie apocalypse and half the country was wiped out, we would then lower the retirement age accordingly.


6. Health care. I am doing my best to avoid mentioning someone by name who everyone knows I detest. But it is the health care issue above all others which really pisses me off about him.

Not that he was the only one who pulled a hoax on the American people. The entire Republican party did long before he came down the shit pipe.

Health care costs have been skyrocketing for at least half a century. The Democrat answer to this problem was, is, and always will be what was originally called "socialize medicine" and is now known as Universal Health Care. The stigma of "socialized" has been removed by the ad men. :lol:

Ted Kennedy was not the first advocate, but he was the biggest. Both figuratively and literally, the fat bastard.

What I am saying is that for basically forever, the Democrats have been telegraphing exactly what their goal is. They did not make it a secret. They shouted it from the mountain. But for most of that time, they were screaming into the void.

But over all that time, the Democrats have succeeded in incrementally achieving the goal. George W. Bush even chipped in by creating a whole new government health care program to pander votes, and it has added more to the debt than Obamacare. Most right wingers are completely ignorance of this. Hell, Bush didn't even bother to try to offset the cost! At least Obama made an attempt to do so with the ACA.

Speaking of the ACA, which was a Great Leap Forward for socialized medicine, the Republicans immediately promised to repeal and replace Obamacare if they were given the power. This was the greatest political hoax of the modern era.

While they were out of power, the GOP passed, what, over 60 repeals knowing Obama would veto every one of those bills. But boy it was great theater for the rubes, wasn't it? They just kept voting for those hucksters until finally that glorious day arrived when the Republicans were given the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Then, suddenly, the GOP repeal and replacement program went dark. If that was not solid proof it had all been a hoax, then nothing is.

And yet the rubes didn't catch on! Unbelievable! They STILL have not caught on!

A "skinny repeal" was passed in the House on Trump's watch, and he did that repeat-a-lie-three-times thing he does. On the White House lawn, Trump held a party and prematurely ejaculated, stating, "“Make no mistake, (one!) “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake (two!) about it. Make no mistake.”(three!)


But it wasn't even close to a full repeal, and it certainly was not a replacement.

Hoax.

And who did the rubes get mad at?

John McCain.

You can't make this shit up.

As a result of all this hucksterism by Trump and the Republicans, Obamacare is now immortal. A third rail like Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, Drumpf!

The Democrats have moved the ball MUCH closer to the goal. UHC is now inevitable.

That's because the Republicans have never had a plan to get health care costs under control. They are too intellectually bankrupt, and so they have silently assented to UHC. They sold us all down the river to UHC decades ago.

Decades ago.

So what is G5000's plan for better health care?

Go ahead and call me a commie Democrat Biden-loving groomer homo, but I believe we have to get the government the fuck out of health care entirely.

With the exception of Medicare I described above.

Ladies and gentlemen, the government is the biggest player in the healthcare market, and they get to write the rules for their private sector competitors! Does it get more fucking commie than that!?!?


You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


I'm not one for conspiracy theories as you all well know. But the fact you CANNOT pick up your phone and call ANY health insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the health insurance which best suits your needs IS a vast bipartisan conspiracy.

You are deliberately being held hostage to your employer insurance. How's that been working for you?

You know how I feel about exemptions, deductions, and credits. Well, the tax deduction corporations get for employer-sponsored health insurance is bending the cost of healthcare UP.

Obama worked very hard to keep that alive. It was a big boon he gave to labor unions.

So that's my solution to healthcare. Get government the fuck out, and let Americans be able to call any health insurance company in America and negotiate for the best insurance which fits their needs.

The best part is that if you bundle all your insurance together with one insurance company, you get big discounts.

No, actually the best part is that you would be able to take your health insurance with you wherever you go. You would no longer be hostage to your employer. You know when you get a new job and you have to wait several months before they let you into their health plan and you pray to god you don't need medical care in the meantime?

That bullshit is gone.

FREEDOM, BABY!



I have more. Lots more. But I hope the point has been driven home.

If I'm in the mood, I will add more items in the coming days.
 
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Judging by the first post, I'd say that "where you are on the political spectrum" is definitely somewhere between "Paid by the word" and "Comically egotistical".e


.
Speaking of spectrums, my wife keeps insisting I am on the autism spectrum at the Aspergers end.

Looking at what I just posted. I am thinking she could be right. :lol:
 
Very long and very well written. I'd say you're in the mainstream with a left bias, which is not where most of your posts are, they are further left when debating.
1. I think we agree on abortion, very much like the EU, a 15 week or so limit .

2/3. I think we agree on taxes. We'll see after we see how Trump gamed the tax system, "only little people pay taxes".
I also hate corporate subsidies, tax deductions, the flat tax.
The wealthy should pay more taxes, we are not serfs.
1669282945505.png


4. Welfare. No one under 50 should get welfare. It should help poor people with no retirement income. Poor people do get food stamps. Then again, what to do with the homeless? You didn't address Medicaid. That needs to be cut.

5. Entitlements. We disagree somewhat. SS is easily fixable. Just raise the cap and the 62 early retirement to 63 or 64. NFW people with physical jobs should need to work past 66. True that office workers could, but not the rest. Once the boomers exit the scene the entitlement funding should settle back to normal.

6. Healthcare. Congrats for even tackling this topic. Get a job with benefits, healthcare solved. That was easy. I also oppose "Medicare for all", aka "socialized medicine".
Your TDS flared up in the healthcare post. Obamacare is here to stay.

7. You did not address MEDICAID or "cable reception" as in your title??

8. 4am post, what state do you live in?
 
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Speaking of spectrums, my wife keeps insisting I am on the autism spectrum at the Aspergers end.
Looking at what I just posted. I am thinking she could be right. :lol:
My wife says that about me too.
That you have a wife means you don't have Aspbergers. Here's a checklist for her to do.
(I only scored 3/11, so I don't have it)
 
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FREEDOM, BABY! You talk about freedom
Shouldn't a patient and their doc decide on the best option. 1 % of women have an abortion after 21 weeks, should that make a difference of what women attune to.


Second-trimester pregnancy termination comprises approximately 10 to 15 percent of abortions performed annually worldwide [1,2]. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, in 2018, approximately 8 percent of abortions were performed between 14 to 20 weeks and 1 percent at or after 21 weeks [3]. instead of legislatures.

About healthcare, isn't it best that your job doesn't have healthcare. Like you said you stick with the same job because you're afraid of changing jobs in respects your changing healthcare.

No one likes paying taxes, but you have to do it.
 
Also addressing small business taxation. Which is horrendous.
Like many small/medium businesses - the government gets more of our sales than we do.
On average we write a monthly check to the government for about 5% of our sales in sales tax. (About 30% of our sales are tax exempt) Then each month we write another hefty check to the IRS, and another to the federal government in payroll taxes.
Add to that, the government gets their money no matter if we make a dime in profit. The government always profits.
Small/Medium businesses have no such exemptions/deductions that end up with us paying no taxes. That is left for the "friends and family" of the government deals.
 
Also addressing small business taxation. Which is horrendous.
Like many small/medium businesses - the government gets more of our sales than we do.
On average we write a monthly check to the government for about 5% of our sales in sales tax. (About 30% of our sales are tax exempt) Then each month we write another hefty check to the IRS, and another to the federal government in payroll taxes.
Add to that, the government gets their money no matter if we make a dime in profit. The government always profits.
Small/Medium businesses have no such exemptions/deductions that end up with us paying no taxes. That is left for the "friends and family" of the government deals.
My husband who is self-employed has to pay 15.3 of his taxes, that make up for payroll taxes he has to pay.
 
Apparently some people are tragically confused about where I am on the political spectrum. So I thought I would consolidate my larger political beliefs into one topic and let the dice fall where they may.

This OP will necessarily be long as I intend to point to it in the future when some fool assumes my political orientation.

You are free to tl;dr this OP and continue to bear false witness against me, but you will always know you are lying and so will everyone else.

I have never understood why some people throw away their integrity so cheaply just to score a momentary, fake political point.

Sometimes your integrity is all you have, folks. It matters. It really, really matters.

Okay, here we go.

1. Abortion. I'm pro-life. It's right there in my signature. I believe this issue has been hijacked by the extremists on both sides. Even though I try to remain calm and collected when talking about abortion, I find myself feeling pushed to the right wing extreme when debating the pro-choice extremists. I think a lot of moderate reasonable people on either side of the issue feel that same compulsion.

So here's the deal. Even though America is split about 50-50 when asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice, it turns out when you ask them specifically about second trimester abortions, a supermajority of Americans are opposed. This means a lot of people who call themselves pro-choice actually have personal beliefs which are in direct opposition to Roe v. Wade which allows abortions on demand all the way to the end of the second trimester.

abortion-trimester-poll.jpg



This extremist-dominated fight has been going on for half a century, with the needle barely moving.

And over the past decade or more, I said many, many times the repeal of Roe V. Wade would have ZERO impact on the number of abortions in America, though I believe for moral reasons that it should be repealed.

Astronomical amounts of energy have been wasted on a zero-sum game.

So what should we do?

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, about half of all abortions are the result of no birth control being used during the sex act which led to the unwanted pregnancy.

HALF!

Another fifth are due to the improper or inconsistent use of birth control.

So just imagine what the result would be if we devoted all that tremendous energy toward getting people to use birth control and use it correctly and consistently.

I believe we would see a dramatic drop in the number of abortions.

And this is a middle ground upon which sane moderate pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet.

This is but one of many issues which there are forces in our country who are doing everything they can to keep us all at each other's throats, though. Someone wants us divided so we can be conquered.

The pro-life extremists are getting more and more sadistic and cruel in their fight against abortion, and it is turning people off. Every pro-abortion measure on the ballot this year succeeded, even in the red states.

I will not go into the profound dark spiritual forces which I believe are at work here.


2. Taxes. Hate 'em! I don't even like that YOU have to pay taxes.

But what I hate most is the ridiculous amount of exemptions, credits, and deductions which are proven to tilt the legislative playing field upward, concentrating wealth up the food chain. I am very much in favor of people who invent a better mouse trap accumulating vast amounts of wealth. They earned it. But I am deeply opposed to the unnatural concentration of wealth.

Every dollar returned to someone in the form of a deduction, exemption, or credit has to be offset. This is done by taking money from someone else's pocket in the form of higher tax rates. This is the greatest wealth redistribution socialist program in history. It is also the worst kind of government interference in the markets. Your home costs an average of 27 percent more because of the mortgage interest deduction, so you are not getting ahead as much as you think you are.

So who's making bank on the mortgage interest deduction? Well, if your houses costs more, you have to pay your realtor more and you have to borrow more from the bank.

Bingo-bango, wealth redistribution up the food chain and massive government interference in the housing market.

That's just one example crammed inside the $1.4 trillion of government deductions, exemptions, and credits each year.

That's $1.4 trillion each year which has to come from your pockets in the form of higher tax rates or by borrowing from China or other investors.

What we have, folks, is an insane system where two people earning identical incomes are paying radically different amounts in taxes!

You are punished with higher taxes for not borrowing money! You are punished with higher taxes for not breeding or breeding less than you neighbors! You are punished with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of refrigerator which some company bribed our elected officials to put in the tax code.

So it was no big leap for Obama to punish you with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of health insurance.

If we eliminated all this socialist wealth redistribution and government interference, we could radically lower tax rates across the board for EVERYONE.

By the way, this political position of mine is a core libertarian principle.

3. Taxes II. Income taxes are a punitive tax on production. I hate 'em! A flat income tax is STILL a punitive tax on production.

There is no magical quality in a flat income tax which prohibits the exact same $1.4 trillion of exemptions, deductions, and credits.

That's a big secret, but you deserve to know.

What this means is that it would be required to raise the flat income tax rate ever higher to offset the $1.4 trillion of deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Most economists agree that a consumption tax is superior and healthier for the economy. I agree, which is why I favor the FAIR Tax.


A flat tax is regressive. It's great for the rich, but it really schlongs the middle class and poor.

The Fair Tax is a kind of sales tax. But since sales taxes are also regressive, the Fair Tax has a prebate built into it.

Everyone gets the exact same prebate amount. To the rich, it's not even lunch money, but to the working poor it can be the difference between starvation and survival.

The Fair Tax also does not have any magical quality which prevents exemptions. Therefore, for every exemption the Fair Tax will have to be raised to offset them.

What's great about the Fair Tax, though, is that everyone immediately notices a tax increase. If you ask everyone you know how much they paid in income taxes from year to year, they would be unable to tell you. They remember what their REFUND was, but they really didn't look at their total tax bill and compare it to previous years.

Just ask your friends and see if I'm right.

But you can't hide a tax hike in the FAIR tax. It is immediately noticed.

Therefore, if the special interests manage to get the leading edge a wedge of exemptions (say, for milk) passed through Congress, everyone will personally feel the result when the FAIR Tax is raised to offset those exemptions. It will therefore be extremely difficult to get exemptions passed.

There is a significant drawback to the FAIR Tax which I won't go into as I have not come up with a solid solution yet.


Or...instead of the FAIR Tax as our consumption tax, we could take a look at Value Added Taxes. Another time, maybe.

In any case, a consumption tax should SUPPLANT the income tax, not SUPPLEMENT it.

Oh, and get this. If you take away the ability of congresscritters to sneak deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, you just took away the incentive for special interest to give them campaign cash in exhange for those tax gifts.

TA-DAAA! You just reformed campaign finance! For real this time.

In all the decades of court decisions, Congressional legislation, and every other effort to reform campaign finance, the money flowing into politics has SKYROCKETED.

That's because the more power we take from the states and centralize at the federal level, the easier you make it to capture that power.

Take away the power to cram $1.4 trillion of giveaways in the tax code, and presto, campaign cash dwindles to a trickle. And this will give challengers to incumbents a fighting chance.

Which is why our politicians will give up that power when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.

Think about this. I do. A lot.




4. Welfare. Here I wander off the libertarian reservation a little bit. But maybe not as much as you might think.

There are some heartless people on the Right who would end all welfare and let our poor sink or swim. The fact is, they would sink.

The poor are not lazy, despite what the echo chamber propagandists pushing their confirmation bias to the limit would have you believe.

Sure, there are people who cheat the system, but they are the exception which prove the rule.

How do I know this? Just walk through a ghetto and see if you smell the odor of boiling lobster or sizzling steaks wafting through the air. Even better, volunteer in the ghetto and get to know these people.

Anyone you see with any kind of "eminence front" going on probably acquired their goods through crime. Poverty breeds crime.

No, the real problem, in my opinion, is the ridiculous number of welfare programs. And for each welfare program, you have to jump through a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to qualify. It's just plain stupid. Misguided compassion has led to a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

These compoundingly dissipative programs are not lifting people out of poverty. They are actually a poverty trap. The only people making out are the social workers drawing down a paycheck. Not that they are paid well. They are actually wonderful people working their asses off to help their fellow man.

But the administrators above them are making bank.

So what am I saying? Would I end all welfare programs?

Yes. Yes I would.

Before any heartless bastards applaud me, let me quickly add I would replace all those welfare programs with a single one.

Milton Friedman's "negative income tax".






So you see, I have not really wandered off the libertarian platform. :)

Someone, I forget who, has Thomas Sowell as their avatar. Check out the first video. :D



5. Entitlement Programs. Let's face it. We are stuck with Social Security and Medicare. I say "stuck" as if I oppose them. I don't.

However, we are living much longer than our ancestors did. Decades longer. It is insane and unsustainable that we start drawing from the national treasury at the same age they did.

We are living longer, we should be working longer. This is just plain common sense.

When Social Security was established in 1935, only 5.7 percent of the US population was over 65. The average American was not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security. SS was for the outliers. The actuarials were against you, especially if you were a blue collar worker.

Most Americans died with their boots on.

By 1965, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. This is the year Medicare was introduced to our entitlement package.

Today, 16 percent of Americans are over 65. Over the past 87 years, we have had a larger and larger percentage of the population drawing from the national treasury for longer and longer periods, while being supported by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

As I said, this is insane and unsustainable.

The retirement age should be indexed to an actuarial.

It so happens that 9 percent of our population is over the age of 70. The same percentage which was over 65 when Medicare was introduced.

I propose we raise the eligibility age to 70, and index it to 9 percent of the population going forward.

If one day there was a zombie apocalypse and half the country was wiped out, we would then lower the retirement age accordingly.


6. Health care. I am doing my best to avoid mentioning someone by name who everyone knows I detest. But it is the health care issue above all others which really pisses me off about him.

Not that he was the only one who pulled a hoax on the American people. The entire Republican party did long before he came down the shit pipe.

Health care costs have been skyrocketing for at least half a century. The Democrat answer to this problem was, is, and always will be what was originally called "socialize medicine" and is now known as Universal Health Care. The stigma of "socialized" has been removed by the ad men. :lol:

Ted Kennedy was not the first advocate, but he was the biggest. Both figuratively and literally, the fat bastard.

What I am saying is that for basically forever, the Democrats have been telegraphing exactly what their goal is. They did not make it a secret. They shouted it from the mountain. But for most of that time, they were screaming into the void.

But over all that time, the Democrats have succeeded in incrementally achieving the goal. George W. Bush even chipped in by creating a whole new government health care program to pander votes, and it has added more to the debt than Obamacare. Most right wingers are completely ignorance of this. Hell, Bush didn't even bother to try to offset the cost! At least Obama made an attempt to do so with the ACA.

Speaking of the ACA, which was a Great Leap Forward for socialized medicine, the Republicans immediately promised to repeal and replace Obamacare if they were given the power. This was the greatest political hoax of the modern era.

While they were out of power, the GOP passed, what, over 60 repeals knowing Obama would veto every one of those bills. But boy it was great theater for the rubes, wasn't it? They just kept voting for those hucksters until finally that glorious day arrived when the Republicans were given the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Then, suddenly, the GOP repeal and replacement program went dark. If that was not solid proof it had all been a hoax, then nothing is.

And yet the rubes didn't catch on! Unbelievable! They STILL have not caught on!

A "skinny repeal" was passed in the House on Trump's watch, and he did that repeat-a-lie-three-times thing he does. On the White House lawn, Trump held a party and prematurely ejaculated, stating, "“Make no mistake, (one!) “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake (two!) about it. Make no mistake.”(three!)


But it wasn't even close to a full repeal, and it certainly was not a replacement.

Hoax.

And who did the rubes get mad at?

John McCain.

You can't make this shit up.

As a result of all this hucksterism by Trump and the Republicans, Obamacare is now immortal. A third rail like Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, Drumpf!

The Democrats have moved the ball MUCH closer to the goal. UHC is now inevitable.

That's because the Republicans have never had a plan to get health care costs under control. They are too intellectually bankrupt, and so they have silently assented to UHC. They sold us all down the river to UHC decades ago.

Decades ago.

So what is G5000's plan for better health care?

Go ahead and call me a commie Democrat Biden-loving groomer homo, but I believe we have to get the government the fuck out of health care entirely.

With the exception of Medicare I described above.

Ladies and gentlemen, the government is the biggest player in the healthcare market, and they get to write the rules for their private sector competitors! Does it get more fucking commie than that!?!?


You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


I'm not one for conspiracy theories as you all well know. But the fact you CANNOT pick up your phone and call ANY health insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the health insurance which best suits your needs IS a vast bipartisan conspiracy.

You are deliberately being held hostage to your employer insurance. How's that been working for you?

You know how I feel about exemptions, deductions, and credits. Well, the tax deduction corporations get for employer-sponsored health insurance is bending the cost of healthcare UP.

Obama worked very hard to keep that alive. It was a big boon he gave to labor unions.

So that's my solution to healthcare. Get government the fuck out, and let Americans be able to call any health insurance company in America and negotiate for the best insurance which fits their needs.

The best part is that if you bundle all your insurance together with one insurance company, you get big discounts.

No, actually the best part is that you would be able to take your health insurance with you wherever you go. You would no longer be hostage to your employer. You know when you get a new job and you have to wait several months before they let you into their health plan and you pray to god you don't need medical care in the meantime?

That bullshit is gone.

FREEDOM, BABY!



I have more. Lots more. But I hope the point has been driven home.

If I'm in the mood, I will add more items in the coming days.

More abortion, higher taxes, more entitlements, making somebody else to pay your health care bills and more welfare ain't gonna make this country any more prosperous. In fact it will destroy the country.

Prosperity will best be achieved by reducing the size of government, taxing less and letting Capitalism do its thing. It ain't rocket science.
 
Apparently some people are tragically confused about where I am on the political spectrum. So I thought I would consolidate my larger political beliefs into one topic and let the dice fall where they may.

This OP will necessarily be long as I intend to point to it in the future when some fool assumes my political orientation.

You are free to tl;dr this OP and continue to bear false witness against me, but you will always know you are lying and so will everyone else.

I have never understood why some people throw away their integrity so cheaply just to score a momentary, fake political point.

Sometimes your integrity is all you have, folks. It matters. It really, really matters.

Okay, here we go.

1. Abortion. I'm pro-life. It's right there in my signature. I believe this issue has been hijacked by the extremists on both sides. Even though I try to remain calm and collected when talking about abortion, I find myself feeling pushed to the right wing extreme when debating the pro-choice extremists. I think a lot of moderate reasonable people on either side of the issue feel that same compulsion.

So here's the deal. Even though America is split about 50-50 when asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice, it turns out when you ask them specifically about second trimester abortions, a supermajority of Americans are opposed. This means a lot of people who call themselves pro-choice actually have personal beliefs which are in direct opposition to Roe v. Wade which allows abortions on demand all the way to the end of the second trimester.

abortion-trimester-poll.jpg



This extremist-dominated fight has been going on for half a century, with the needle barely moving.

And over the past decade or more, I said many, many times the repeal of Roe V. Wade would have ZERO impact on the number of abortions in America, though I believe for moral reasons that it should be repealed.

Astronomical amounts of energy have been wasted on a zero-sum game.

So what should we do?

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, about half of all abortions are the result of no birth control being used during the sex act which led to the unwanted pregnancy.

HALF!

Another fifth are due to the improper or inconsistent use of birth control.

So just imagine what the result would be if we devoted all that tremendous energy toward getting people to use birth control and use it correctly and consistently.

I believe we would see a dramatic drop in the number of abortions.

And this is a middle ground upon which sane moderate pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet.

This is but one of many issues which there are forces in our country who are doing everything they can to keep us all at each other's throats, though. Someone wants us divided so we can be conquered.

The pro-life extremists are getting more and more sadistic and cruel in their fight against abortion, and it is turning people off. Every pro-abortion measure on the ballot this year succeeded, even in the red states.

I will not go into the profound dark spiritual forces which I believe are at work here.


2. Taxes. Hate 'em! I don't even like that YOU have to pay taxes.

But what I hate most is the ridiculous amount of exemptions, credits, and deductions which are proven to tilt the legislative playing field upward, concentrating wealth up the food chain. I am very much in favor of people who invent a better mouse trap accumulating vast amounts of wealth. They earned it. But I am deeply opposed to the unnatural concentration of wealth.

Every dollar returned to someone in the form of a deduction, exemption, or credit has to be offset. This is done by taking money from someone else's pocket in the form of higher tax rates. This is the greatest wealth redistribution socialist program in history. It is also the worst kind of government interference in the markets. Your home costs an average of 27 percent more because of the mortgage interest deduction, so you are not getting ahead as much as you think you are.

So who's making bank on the mortgage interest deduction? Well, if your houses costs more, you have to pay your realtor more and you have to borrow more from the bank.

Bingo-bango, wealth redistribution up the food chain and massive government interference in the housing market.

That's just one example crammed inside the $1.4 trillion of government deductions, exemptions, and credits each year.

That's $1.4 trillion each year which has to come from your pockets in the form of higher tax rates or by borrowing from China or other investors.

What we have, folks, is an insane system where two people earning identical incomes are paying radically different amounts in taxes!

You are punished with higher taxes for not borrowing money! You are punished with higher taxes for not breeding or breeding less than you neighbors! You are punished with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of refrigerator which some company bribed our elected officials to put in the tax code.

So it was no big leap for Obama to punish you with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of health insurance.

If we eliminated all this socialist wealth redistribution and government interference, we could radically lower tax rates across the board for EVERYONE.

By the way, this political position of mine is a core libertarian principle.

3. Taxes II. Income taxes are a punitive tax on production. I hate 'em! A flat income tax is STILL a punitive tax on production.

There is no magical quality in a flat income tax which prohibits the exact same $1.4 trillion of exemptions, deductions, and credits.

That's a big secret, but you deserve to know.

What this means is that it would be required to raise the flat income tax rate ever higher to offset the $1.4 trillion of deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Most economists agree that a consumption tax is superior and healthier for the economy. I agree, which is why I favor the FAIR Tax.


A flat tax is regressive. It's great for the rich, but it really schlongs the middle class and poor.

The Fair Tax is a kind of sales tax. But since sales taxes are also regressive, the Fair Tax has a prebate built into it.

Everyone gets the exact same prebate amount. To the rich, it's not even lunch money, but to the working poor it can be the difference between starvation and survival.

The Fair Tax also does not have any magical quality which prevents exemptions. Therefore, for every exemption the Fair Tax will have to be raised to offset them.

What's great about the Fair Tax, though, is that everyone immediately notices a tax increase. If you ask everyone you know how much they paid in income taxes from year to year, they would be unable to tell you. They remember what their REFUND was, but they really didn't look at their total tax bill and compare it to previous years.

Just ask your friends and see if I'm right.

But you can't hide a tax hike in the FAIR tax. It is immediately noticed.

Therefore, if the special interests manage to get the leading edge a wedge of exemptions (say, for milk) passed through Congress, everyone will personally feel the result when the FAIR Tax is raised to offset those exemptions. It will therefore be extremely difficult to get exemptions passed.

There is a significant drawback to the FAIR Tax which I won't go into as I have not come up with a solid solution yet.


Or...instead of the FAIR Tax as our consumption tax, we could take a look at Value Added Taxes. Another time, maybe.

In any case, a consumption tax should SUPPLANT the income tax, not SUPPLEMENT it.

Oh, and get this. If you take away the ability of congresscritters to sneak deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, you just took away the incentive for special interest to give them campaign cash in exhange for those tax gifts.

TA-DAAA! You just reformed campaign finance! For real this time.

In all the decades of court decisions, Congressional legislation, and every other effort to reform campaign finance, the money flowing into politics has SKYROCKETED.

That's because the more power we take from the states and centralize at the federal level, the easier you make it to capture that power.

Take away the power to cram $1.4 trillion of giveaways in the tax code, and presto, campaign cash dwindles to a trickle. And this will give challengers to incumbents a fighting chance.

Which is why our politicians will give up that power when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.

Think about this. I do. A lot.




4. Welfare. Here I wander off the libertarian reservation a little bit. But maybe not as much as you might think.

There are some heartless people on the Right who would end all welfare and let our poor sink or swim. The fact is, they would sink.

The poor are not lazy, despite what the echo chamber propagandists pushing their confirmation bias to the limit would have you believe.

Sure, there are people who cheat the system, but they are the exception which prove the rule.

How do I know this? Just walk through a ghetto and see if you smell the odor of boiling lobster or sizzling steaks wafting through the air. Even better, volunteer in the ghetto and get to know these people.

Anyone you see with any kind of "eminence front" going on probably acquired their goods through crime. Poverty breeds crime.

No, the real problem, in my opinion, is the ridiculous number of welfare programs. And for each welfare program, you have to jump through a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to qualify. It's just plain stupid. Misguided compassion has led to a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

These compoundingly dissipative programs are not lifting people out of poverty. They are actually a poverty trap. The only people making out are the social workers drawing down a paycheck. Not that they are paid well. They are actually wonderful people working their asses off to help their fellow man.

But the administrators above them are making bank.

So what am I saying? Would I end all welfare programs?

Yes. Yes I would.

Before any heartless bastards applaud me, let me quickly add I would replace all those welfare programs with a single one.

Milton Friedman's "negative income tax".






So you see, I have not really wandered off the libertarian platform. :)

Someone, I forget who, has Thomas Sowell as their avatar. Check out the first video. :D



5. Entitlement Programs. Let's face it. We are stuck with Social Security and Medicare. I say "stuck" as if I oppose them. I don't.

However, we are living much longer than our ancestors did. Decades longer. It is insane and unsustainable that we start drawing from the national treasury at the same age they did.

We are living longer, we should be working longer. This is just plain common sense.

When Social Security was established in 1935, only 5.7 percent of the US population was over 65. The average American was not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security. SS was for the outliers. The actuarials were against you, especially if you were a blue collar worker.

Most Americans died with their boots on.

By 1965, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. This is the year Medicare was introduced to our entitlement package.

Today, 16 percent of Americans are over 65. Over the past 87 years, we have had a larger and larger percentage of the population drawing from the national treasury for longer and longer periods, while being supported by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

As I said, this is insane and unsustainable.

The retirement age should be indexed to an actuarial.

It so happens that 9 percent of our population is over the age of 70. The same percentage which was over 65 when Medicare was introduced.

I propose we raise the eligibility age to 70, and index it to 9 percent of the population going forward.

If one day there was a zombie apocalypse and half the country was wiped out, we would then lower the retirement age accordingly.


6. Health care. I am doing my best to avoid mentioning someone by name who everyone knows I detest. But it is the health care issue above all others which really pisses me off about him.

Not that he was the only one who pulled a hoax on the American people. The entire Republican party did long before he came down the shit pipe.

Health care costs have been skyrocketing for at least half a century. The Democrat answer to this problem was, is, and always will be what was originally called "socialize medicine" and is now known as Universal Health Care. The stigma of "socialized" has been removed by the ad men. :lol:

Ted Kennedy was not the first advocate, but he was the biggest. Both figuratively and literally, the fat bastard.

What I am saying is that for basically forever, the Democrats have been telegraphing exactly what their goal is. They did not make it a secret. They shouted it from the mountain. But for most of that time, they were screaming into the void.

But over all that time, the Democrats have succeeded in incrementally achieving the goal. George W. Bush even chipped in by creating a whole new government health care program to pander votes, and it has added more to the debt than Obamacare. Most right wingers are completely ignorance of this. Hell, Bush didn't even bother to try to offset the cost! At least Obama made an attempt to do so with the ACA.

Speaking of the ACA, which was a Great Leap Forward for socialized medicine, the Republicans immediately promised to repeal and replace Obamacare if they were given the power. This was the greatest political hoax of the modern era.

While they were out of power, the GOP passed, what, over 60 repeals knowing Obama would veto every one of those bills. But boy it was great theater for the rubes, wasn't it? They just kept voting for those hucksters until finally that glorious day arrived when the Republicans were given the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Then, suddenly, the GOP repeal and replacement program went dark. If that was not solid proof it had all been a hoax, then nothing is.

And yet the rubes didn't catch on! Unbelievable! They STILL have not caught on!

A "skinny repeal" was passed in the House on Trump's watch, and he did that repeat-a-lie-three-times thing he does. On the White House lawn, Trump held a party and prematurely ejaculated, stating, "“Make no mistake, (one!) “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake (two!) about it. Make no mistake.”(three!)


But it wasn't even close to a full repeal, and it certainly was not a replacement.

Hoax.

And who did the rubes get mad at?

John McCain.

You can't make this shit up.

As a result of all this hucksterism by Trump and the Republicans, Obamacare is now immortal. A third rail like Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, Drumpf!

The Democrats have moved the ball MUCH closer to the goal. UHC is now inevitable.

That's because the Republicans have never had a plan to get health care costs under control. They are too intellectually bankrupt, and so they have silently assented to UHC. They sold us all down the river to UHC decades ago.

Decades ago.

So what is G5000's plan for better health care?

Go ahead and call me a commie Democrat Biden-loving groomer homo, but I believe we have to get the government the fuck out of health care entirely.

With the exception of Medicare I described above.

Ladies and gentlemen, the government is the biggest player in the healthcare market, and they get to write the rules for their private sector competitors! Does it get more fucking commie than that!?!?


You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


I'm not one for conspiracy theories as you all well know. But the fact you CANNOT pick up your phone and call ANY health insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the health insurance which best suits your needs IS a vast bipartisan conspiracy.

You are deliberately being held hostage to your employer insurance. How's that been working for you?

You know how I feel about exemptions, deductions, and credits. Well, the tax deduction corporations get for employer-sponsored health insurance is bending the cost of healthcare UP.

Obama worked very hard to keep that alive. It was a big boon he gave to labor unions.

So that's my solution to healthcare. Get government the fuck out, and let Americans be able to call any health insurance company in America and negotiate for the best insurance which fits their needs.

The best part is that if you bundle all your insurance together with one insurance company, you get big discounts.

No, actually the best part is that you would be able to take your health insurance with you wherever you go. You would no longer be hostage to your employer. You know when you get a new job and you have to wait several months before they let you into their health plan and you pray to god you don't need medical care in the meantime?

That bullshit is gone.

FREEDOM, BABY!



I have more. Lots more. But I hope the point has been driven home.

If I'm in the mood, I will add more items in the coming days.

On social security and even pensions, the elderly like independence. Perhaps if done differently we would have a vastly upscale "Waltons" type of living today and families actually more caring and together with each other.
 
My husband who is self-employed has to pay 15.3 of his taxes, that make up for payroll taxes he has to pay.
Not sure I understand what you are saying?
You are saying his overall taxation s only 15.3%... that would be unheard of. He would have to be cheating to only pay that much.
 
Not sure I understand what you are saying?
You are saying his overall taxation s only 15.3%... that would be unheard of. He would have to be cheating to only pay that much.

No. I believe that is referring to the self employed FICA Tax. Normally employers pay half and the employee pays half, but self employed by the whole thing. This in addition to any other taxes like income tax.

Just my reading of it.

WW
 
My wife says that about me too.
That you have a wife means you don't have Aspbergers. Here's a checklist for her to do.
(I only scored 3/11, so I don't have it)
Yikes.

My wife looked at that link and for almost all of them she was like, "Helloooo? Hell yeah! Are you kidding me?"

She fully endorsed 9 of them and gave me half a point each for the other two.

Fuck.
 
Very long and very well written. I'd say you're in the mainstream with a left bias, which is not where most of your posts are, they are further left when debating.
1. I think we agree on abortion, very much like the EU, a 15 week or so limit .
I am opposed to all abortions. Even first trimester. But I could live with first trimester abortions. I would not go to war over it.

My focus is on birth control. That's where the solution is and where all Americans could meet.


2/3. I think we agree on taxes. We'll see after we see how Trump gamed the tax system, "only little people pay taxes".
I also hate corporate subsidies, tax deductions, the flat tax.
The wealthy should pay more taxes, we are not serfs.
View attachment 730294
I made a mental note in my second post to talk about "tax the rich more".

Wealth inequality is not created by taxing the rich too little. It is created by what I talked about with deductions, credits, and exemptions. If we leveled the playing field, we could actually lower tax rates for everyone, including the rich.

Unnatural wealth concentration is also caused by government regulation. That's another mental note I made which I will get into later.




4. Welfare. No one under 50 should get welfare. It should help poor people with no retirement income. Poor p.
What are your thoughts about Milton Friedman's "negative income tax"?

Eliminate all welfare programs and replace them with Friedman's negative income tax.


5. Entitlements. We disagree somewhat. SS is easily fixable. Just raise the cap and the 62 early retirement to 63 or 64. NFW people with physical jobs should need to work past 66. True that office workers could, but not the rest. Once the boomers exit the scene the entitlement funding should settle back to normal.
From the very beginning, blue collar workers were at a disadvantage. As I said, most Americans were not expected to live long enough to actually collect Social Security. They died with their boots on. SS was meant for outliers who beat the odds.


you
6. Healthcare. Congrats for even tackling this topic. Get a job with benefits, healthcare solved. That was easy.
Not really. You are held hostage to your employer. If you lose a job, you are uninsured. When you get a new job, you have to wait several months before you qualify for new employer's insurance plan.

Employer health insurance is a total scam which was created by labor unions and it bends the cost of health care up.

So, no. That is not easy.

Employer health insurance needs to go away, along with its boondoggle tax deduction.

There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy your life, auto, and home insurance. That would free you from being held hostage by your employer.


I also oppose "Medicare for all", aka "socialized medicine".
Your TDS flared up in the healthcare post. Obamacare is here to stay.
Yes, Obamacare is here to stay, with UHC not far behind. Thanks to the GOP.

In my opinion, we need to get government out of all healthcare, excepting Medicare.


7. You did not address MEDICAID or "cable reception" as in your title??

8. 4am post, what state do you live in?
Cable reception was a joke.

I've been suffering from a bad case of insomnia for the past several days.
 
I am opposed to all abortions. Even first trimester. But I could live with first trimester abortions. I would not go to war over it.

My focus is on birth control. That's where the solution is and where all Americans could meet.



I made a mental note in my second post to talk about "tax the rich more".

Wealth inequality is not created by taxing the rich too little. It is created by what I talked about with deductions, credits, and exemptions. If we leveled the playing field, we could actually lower tax rates for everyone, including the rich.

Unnatural wealth concentration is also caused by government regulation. That's another mental note I made which I will get into later.





What are your thoughts about Milton Friedman's "negative income tax"?

Eliminate all welfare programs and replace them with Friedman's negative income tax.



From the very beginning, blue collar workers were at a disadvantage. As I said, most Americans were not expected to live long enough to actually collect Social Security. They died with their boots on. SS was meant for outliers who beat the odds.



Not really. You are held hostage to your employer. If you lose a job, you are uninsured. When you get a new job, you have to wait several months before you qualify for new employer's insurance plan.

Employer health insurance is a total scam which was created by labor unions and it bends the cost of health care up.

So, no. That is not easy.

Employer health insurance needs to go away, along with its boondoggle tax deduction.

There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy your life, auto, and home insurance. That would free you from being held hostage by your employer.



Yes, Obamacare is here to stay, with UHC not far behind. Thanks to the GOP.

In my opinion, we need to get government out of all healthcare, excepting Medicare.



Cable reception was a joke.

I've been suffering from a bad case of insomnia for the past several days.
When the powerful state becomes the god. Medical procedures in all ways will be quite known. Sluts will have their tubes tied. Men who produce children without paying for them will be neutered. Just the beginning.
 
Apparently some people are tragically confused about where I am on the political spectrum. So I thought I would consolidate my larger political beliefs into one topic and let the dice fall where they may.

This OP will necessarily be long as I intend to point to it in the future when some fool assumes my political orientation.

You are free to tl;dr this OP and continue to bear false witness against me, but you will always know you are lying and so will everyone else.

I have never understood why some people throw away their integrity so cheaply just to score a momentary, fake political point.

Sometimes your integrity is all you have, folks. It matters. It really, really matters.

Okay, here we go.

1. Abortion. I'm pro-life. It's right there in my signature. I believe this issue has been hijacked by the extremists on both sides. Even though I try to remain calm and collected when talking about abortion, I find myself feeling pushed to the right wing extreme when debating the pro-choice extremists. I think a lot of moderate reasonable people on either side of the issue feel that same compulsion.

So here's the deal. Even though America is split about 50-50 when asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice, it turns out when you ask them specifically about second trimester abortions, a supermajority of Americans are opposed. This means a lot of people who call themselves pro-choice actually have personal beliefs which are in direct opposition to Roe v. Wade which allows abortions on demand all the way to the end of the second trimester.

abortion-trimester-poll.jpg



This extremist-dominated fight has been going on for half a century, with the needle barely moving.

And over the past decade or more, I said many, many times the repeal of Roe V. Wade would have ZERO impact on the number of abortions in America, though I believe for moral reasons that it should be repealed.

Astronomical amounts of energy have been wasted on a zero-sum game.

So what should we do?

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, about half of all abortions are the result of no birth control being used during the sex act which led to the unwanted pregnancy.

HALF!

Another fifth are due to the improper or inconsistent use of birth control.

So just imagine what the result would be if we devoted all that tremendous energy toward getting people to use birth control and use it correctly and consistently.

I believe we would see a dramatic drop in the number of abortions.

And this is a middle ground upon which sane moderate pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet.

This is but one of many issues which there are forces in our country who are doing everything they can to keep us all at each other's throats, though. Someone wants us divided so we can be conquered.

The pro-life extremists are getting more and more sadistic and cruel in their fight against abortion, and it is turning people off. Every pro-abortion measure on the ballot this year succeeded, even in the red states.

I will not go into the profound dark spiritual forces which I believe are at work here.


2. Taxes. Hate 'em! I don't even like that YOU have to pay taxes.

But what I hate most is the ridiculous amount of exemptions, credits, and deductions which are proven to tilt the legislative playing field upward, concentrating wealth up the food chain. I am very much in favor of people who invent a better mouse trap accumulating vast amounts of wealth. They earned it. But I am deeply opposed to the unnatural concentration of wealth.

Every dollar returned to someone in the form of a deduction, exemption, or credit has to be offset. This is done by taking money from someone else's pocket in the form of higher tax rates. This is the greatest wealth redistribution socialist program in history. It is also the worst kind of government interference in the markets. Your home costs an average of 27 percent more because of the mortgage interest deduction, so you are not getting ahead as much as you think you are.

So who's making bank on the mortgage interest deduction? Well, if your houses costs more, you have to pay your realtor more and you have to borrow more from the bank.

Bingo-bango, wealth redistribution up the food chain and massive government interference in the housing market.

That's just one example crammed inside the $1.4 trillion of government deductions, exemptions, and credits each year.

That's $1.4 trillion each year which has to come from your pockets in the form of higher tax rates or by borrowing from China or other investors.

What we have, folks, is an insane system where two people earning identical incomes are paying radically different amounts in taxes!

You are punished with higher taxes for not borrowing money! You are punished with higher taxes for not breeding or breeding less than you neighbors! You are punished with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of refrigerator which some company bribed our elected officials to put in the tax code.

So it was no big leap for Obama to punish you with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of health insurance.

If we eliminated all this socialist wealth redistribution and government interference, we could radically lower tax rates across the board for EVERYONE.

By the way, this political position of mine is a core libertarian principle.

3. Taxes II. Income taxes are a punitive tax on production. I hate 'em! A flat income tax is STILL a punitive tax on production.

There is no magical quality in a flat income tax which prohibits the exact same $1.4 trillion of exemptions, deductions, and credits.

That's a big secret, but you deserve to know.

What this means is that it would be required to raise the flat income tax rate ever higher to offset the $1.4 trillion of deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Most economists agree that a consumption tax is superior and healthier for the economy. I agree, which is why I favor the FAIR Tax.


A flat tax is regressive. It's great for the rich, but it really schlongs the middle class and poor.

The Fair Tax is a kind of sales tax. But since sales taxes are also regressive, the Fair Tax has a prebate built into it.

Everyone gets the exact same prebate amount. To the rich, it's not even lunch money, but to the working poor it can be the difference between starvation and survival.

The Fair Tax also does not have any magical quality which prevents exemptions. Therefore, for every exemption the Fair Tax will have to be raised to offset them.

What's great about the Fair Tax, though, is that everyone immediately notices a tax increase. If you ask everyone you know how much they paid in income taxes from year to year, they would be unable to tell you. They remember what their REFUND was, but they really didn't look at their total tax bill and compare it to previous years.

Just ask your friends and see if I'm right.

But you can't hide a tax hike in the FAIR tax. It is immediately noticed.

Therefore, if the special interests manage to get the leading edge a wedge of exemptions (say, for milk) passed through Congress, everyone will personally feel the result when the FAIR Tax is raised to offset those exemptions. It will therefore be extremely difficult to get exemptions passed.

There is a significant drawback to the FAIR Tax which I won't go into as I have not come up with a solid solution yet.


Or...instead of the FAIR Tax as our consumption tax, we could take a look at Value Added Taxes. Another time, maybe.

In any case, a consumption tax should SUPPLANT the income tax, not SUPPLEMENT it.

Oh, and get this. If you take away the ability of congresscritters to sneak deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, you just took away the incentive for special interest to give them campaign cash in exhange for those tax gifts.

TA-DAAA! You just reformed campaign finance! For real this time.

In all the decades of court decisions, Congressional legislation, and every other effort to reform campaign finance, the money flowing into politics has SKYROCKETED.

That's because the more power we take from the states and centralize at the federal level, the easier you make it to capture that power.

Take away the power to cram $1.4 trillion of giveaways in the tax code, and presto, campaign cash dwindles to a trickle. And this will give challengers to incumbents a fighting chance.

Which is why our politicians will give up that power when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.

Think about this. I do. A lot.




4. Welfare. Here I wander off the libertarian reservation a little bit. But maybe not as much as you might think.

There are some heartless people on the Right who would end all welfare and let our poor sink or swim. The fact is, they would sink.

The poor are not lazy, despite what the echo chamber propagandists pushing their confirmation bias to the limit would have you believe.

Sure, there are people who cheat the system, but they are the exception which prove the rule.

How do I know this? Just walk through a ghetto and see if you smell the odor of boiling lobster or sizzling steaks wafting through the air. Even better, volunteer in the ghetto and get to know these people.

Anyone you see with any kind of "eminence front" going on probably acquired their goods through crime. Poverty breeds crime.

No, the real problem, in my opinion, is the ridiculous number of welfare programs. And for each welfare program, you have to jump through a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to qualify. It's just plain stupid. Misguided compassion has led to a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

These compoundingly dissipative programs are not lifting people out of poverty. They are actually a poverty trap. The only people making out are the social workers drawing down a paycheck. Not that they are paid well. They are actually wonderful people working their asses off to help their fellow man.

But the administrators above them are making bank.

So what am I saying? Would I end all welfare programs?

Yes. Yes I would.

Before any heartless bastards applaud me, let me quickly add I would replace all those welfare programs with a single one.

Milton Friedman's "negative income tax".






So you see, I have not really wandered off the libertarian platform. :)

Someone, I forget who, has Thomas Sowell as their avatar. Check out the first video. :D



5. Entitlement Programs. Let's face it. We are stuck with Social Security and Medicare. I say "stuck" as if I oppose them. I don't.

However, we are living much longer than our ancestors did. Decades longer. It is insane and unsustainable that we start drawing from the national treasury at the same age they did.

We are living longer, we should be working longer. This is just plain common sense.

When Social Security was established in 1935, only 5.7 percent of the US population was over 65. The average American was not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security. SS was for the outliers. The actuarials were against you, especially if you were a blue collar worker.

Most Americans died with their boots on.

By 1965, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. This is the year Medicare was introduced to our entitlement package.

Today, 16 percent of Americans are over 65. Over the past 87 years, we have had a larger and larger percentage of the population drawing from the national treasury for longer and longer periods, while being supported by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

As I said, this is insane and unsustainable.

The retirement age should be indexed to an actuarial.

It so happens that 9 percent of our population is over the age of 70. The same percentage which was over 65 when Medicare was introduced.

I propose we raise the eligibility age to 70, and index it to 9 percent of the population going forward.

If one day there was a zombie apocalypse and half the country was wiped out, we would then lower the retirement age accordingly.


6. Health care. I am doing my best to avoid mentioning someone by name who everyone knows I detest. But it is the health care issue above all others which really pisses me off about him.

Not that he was the only one who pulled a hoax on the American people. The entire Republican party did long before he came down the shit pipe.

Health care costs have been skyrocketing for at least half a century. The Democrat answer to this problem was, is, and always will be what was originally called "socialize medicine" and is now known as Universal Health Care. The stigma of "socialized" has been removed by the ad men. :lol:

Ted Kennedy was not the first advocate, but he was the biggest. Both figuratively and literally, the fat bastard.

What I am saying is that for basically forever, the Democrats have been telegraphing exactly what their goal is. They did not make it a secret. They shouted it from the mountain. But for most of that time, they were screaming into the void.

But over all that time, the Democrats have succeeded in incrementally achieving the goal. George W. Bush even chipped in by creating a whole new government health care program to pander votes, and it has added more to the debt than Obamacare. Most right wingers are completely ignorance of this. Hell, Bush didn't even bother to try to offset the cost! At least Obama made an attempt to do so with the ACA.

Speaking of the ACA, which was a Great Leap Forward for socialized medicine, the Republicans immediately promised to repeal and replace Obamacare if they were given the power. This was the greatest political hoax of the modern era.

While they were out of power, the GOP passed, what, over 60 repeals knowing Obama would veto every one of those bills. But boy it was great theater for the rubes, wasn't it? They just kept voting for those hucksters until finally that glorious day arrived when the Republicans were given the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Then, suddenly, the GOP repeal and replacement program went dark. If that was not solid proof it had all been a hoax, then nothing is.

And yet the rubes didn't catch on! Unbelievable! They STILL have not caught on!

A "skinny repeal" was passed in the House on Trump's watch, and he did that repeat-a-lie-three-times thing he does. On the White House lawn, Trump held a party and prematurely ejaculated, stating, "“Make no mistake, (one!) “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake (two!) about it. Make no mistake.”(three!)


But it wasn't even close to a full repeal, and it certainly was not a replacement.

Hoax.

And who did the rubes get mad at?

John McCain.

You can't make this shit up.

As a result of all this hucksterism by Trump and the Republicans, Obamacare is now immortal. A third rail like Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, Drumpf!

The Democrats have moved the ball MUCH closer to the goal. UHC is now inevitable.

That's because the Republicans have never had a plan to get health care costs under control. They are too intellectually bankrupt, and so they have silently assented to UHC. They sold us all down the river to UHC decades ago.

Decades ago.

So what is G5000's plan for better health care?

Go ahead and call me a commie Democrat Biden-loving groomer homo, but I believe we have to get the government the fuck out of health care entirely.

With the exception of Medicare I described above.

Ladies and gentlemen, the government is the biggest player in the healthcare market, and they get to write the rules for their private sector competitors! Does it get more fucking commie than that!?!?


You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


I'm not one for conspiracy theories as you all well know. But the fact you CANNOT pick up your phone and call ANY health insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the health insurance which best suits your needs IS a vast bipartisan conspiracy.

You are deliberately being held hostage to your employer insurance. How's that been working for you?

You know how I feel about exemptions, deductions, and credits. Well, the tax deduction corporations get for employer-sponsored health insurance is bending the cost of healthcare UP.

Obama worked very hard to keep that alive. It was a big boon he gave to labor unions.

So that's my solution to healthcare. Get government the fuck out, and let Americans be able to call any health insurance company in America and negotiate for the best insurance which fits their needs.

The best part is that if you bundle all your insurance together with one insurance company, you get big discounts.

No, actually the best part is that you would be able to take your health insurance with you wherever you go. You would no longer be hostage to your employer. You know when you get a new job and you have to wait several months before they let you into their health plan and you pray to god you don't need medical care in the meantime?

That bullshit is gone.

FREEDOM, BABY!



I have more. Lots more. But I hope the point has been driven home.

If I'm in the mood, I will add more items in the coming days.

TLDR
 
Apparently some people are tragically confused about where I am on the political spectrum. So I thought I would consolidate my larger political beliefs into one topic and let the dice fall where they may.

This OP will necessarily be long as I intend to point to it in the future when some fool assumes my political orientation.

You are free to tl;dr this OP and continue to bear false witness against me, but you will always know you are lying and so will everyone else.

I have never understood why some people throw away their integrity so cheaply just to score a momentary, fake political point.

Sometimes your integrity is all you have, folks. It matters. It really, really matters.

Okay, here we go.

1. Abortion. I'm pro-life. It's right there in my signature. I believe this issue has been hijacked by the extremists on both sides. Even though I try to remain calm and collected when talking about abortion, I find myself feeling pushed to the right wing extreme when debating the pro-choice extremists. I think a lot of moderate reasonable people on either side of the issue feel that same compulsion.

So here's the deal. Even though America is split about 50-50 when asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice, it turns out when you ask them specifically about second trimester abortions, a supermajority of Americans are opposed. This means a lot of people who call themselves pro-choice actually have personal beliefs which are in direct opposition to Roe v. Wade which allows abortions on demand all the way to the end of the second trimester.

abortion-trimester-poll.jpg



This extremist-dominated fight has been going on for half a century, with the needle barely moving.

And over the past decade or more, I said many, many times the repeal of Roe V. Wade would have ZERO impact on the number of abortions in America, though I believe for moral reasons that it should be repealed.

Astronomical amounts of energy have been wasted on a zero-sum game.

So what should we do?

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, about half of all abortions are the result of no birth control being used during the sex act which led to the unwanted pregnancy.

HALF!

Another fifth are due to the improper or inconsistent use of birth control.

So just imagine what the result would be if we devoted all that tremendous energy toward getting people to use birth control and use it correctly and consistently.

I believe we would see a dramatic drop in the number of abortions.

And this is a middle ground upon which sane moderate pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet.

This is but one of many issues which there are forces in our country who are doing everything they can to keep us all at each other's throats, though. Someone wants us divided so we can be conquered.

The pro-life extremists are getting more and more sadistic and cruel in their fight against abortion, and it is turning people off. Every pro-abortion measure on the ballot this year succeeded, even in the red states.

I will not go into the profound dark spiritual forces which I believe are at work here.


2. Taxes. Hate 'em! I don't even like that YOU have to pay taxes.

But what I hate most is the ridiculous amount of exemptions, credits, and deductions which are proven to tilt the legislative playing field upward, concentrating wealth up the food chain. I am very much in favor of people who invent a better mouse trap accumulating vast amounts of wealth. They earned it. But I am deeply opposed to the unnatural concentration of wealth.

Every dollar returned to someone in the form of a deduction, exemption, or credit has to be offset. This is done by taking money from someone else's pocket in the form of higher tax rates. This is the greatest wealth redistribution socialist program in history. It is also the worst kind of government interference in the markets. Your home costs an average of 27 percent more because of the mortgage interest deduction, so you are not getting ahead as much as you think you are.

So who's making bank on the mortgage interest deduction? Well, if your houses costs more, you have to pay your realtor more and you have to borrow more from the bank.

Bingo-bango, wealth redistribution up the food chain and massive government interference in the housing market.

That's just one example crammed inside the $1.4 trillion of government deductions, exemptions, and credits each year.

That's $1.4 trillion each year which has to come from your pockets in the form of higher tax rates or by borrowing from China or other investors.

What we have, folks, is an insane system where two people earning identical incomes are paying radically different amounts in taxes!

You are punished with higher taxes for not borrowing money! You are punished with higher taxes for not breeding or breeding less than you neighbors! You are punished with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of refrigerator which some company bribed our elected officials to put in the tax code.

So it was no big leap for Obama to punish you with higher taxes for not buying the right kind of health insurance.

If we eliminated all this socialist wealth redistribution and government interference, we could radically lower tax rates across the board for EVERYONE.

By the way, this political position of mine is a core libertarian principle.

3. Taxes II. Income taxes are a punitive tax on production. I hate 'em! A flat income tax is STILL a punitive tax on production.

There is no magical quality in a flat income tax which prohibits the exact same $1.4 trillion of exemptions, deductions, and credits.

That's a big secret, but you deserve to know.

What this means is that it would be required to raise the flat income tax rate ever higher to offset the $1.4 trillion of deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Most economists agree that a consumption tax is superior and healthier for the economy. I agree, which is why I favor the FAIR Tax.


A flat tax is regressive. It's great for the rich, but it really schlongs the middle class and poor.

The Fair Tax is a kind of sales tax. But since sales taxes are also regressive, the Fair Tax has a prebate built into it.

Everyone gets the exact same prebate amount. To the rich, it's not even lunch money, but to the working poor it can be the difference between starvation and survival.

The Fair Tax also does not have any magical quality which prevents exemptions. Therefore, for every exemption the Fair Tax will have to be raised to offset them.

What's great about the Fair Tax, though, is that everyone immediately notices a tax increase. If you ask everyone you know how much they paid in income taxes from year to year, they would be unable to tell you. They remember what their REFUND was, but they really didn't look at their total tax bill and compare it to previous years.

Just ask your friends and see if I'm right.

But you can't hide a tax hike in the FAIR tax. It is immediately noticed.

Therefore, if the special interests manage to get the leading edge a wedge of exemptions (say, for milk) passed through Congress, everyone will personally feel the result when the FAIR Tax is raised to offset those exemptions. It will therefore be extremely difficult to get exemptions passed.

There is a significant drawback to the FAIR Tax which I won't go into as I have not come up with a solid solution yet.


Or...instead of the FAIR Tax as our consumption tax, we could take a look at Value Added Taxes. Another time, maybe.

In any case, a consumption tax should SUPPLANT the income tax, not SUPPLEMENT it.

Oh, and get this. If you take away the ability of congresscritters to sneak deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, you just took away the incentive for special interest to give them campaign cash in exhange for those tax gifts.

TA-DAAA! You just reformed campaign finance! For real this time.

In all the decades of court decisions, Congressional legislation, and every other effort to reform campaign finance, the money flowing into politics has SKYROCKETED.

That's because the more power we take from the states and centralize at the federal level, the easier you make it to capture that power.

Take away the power to cram $1.4 trillion of giveaways in the tax code, and presto, campaign cash dwindles to a trickle. And this will give challengers to incumbents a fighting chance.

Which is why our politicians will give up that power when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.

Think about this. I do. A lot.




4. Welfare. Here I wander off the libertarian reservation a little bit. But maybe not as much as you might think.

There are some heartless people on the Right who would end all welfare and let our poor sink or swim. The fact is, they would sink.

The poor are not lazy, despite what the echo chamber propagandists pushing their confirmation bias to the limit would have you believe.

Sure, there are people who cheat the system, but they are the exception which prove the rule.

How do I know this? Just walk through a ghetto and see if you smell the odor of boiling lobster or sizzling steaks wafting through the air. Even better, volunteer in the ghetto and get to know these people.

Anyone you see with any kind of "eminence front" going on probably acquired their goods through crime. Poverty breeds crime.

No, the real problem, in my opinion, is the ridiculous number of welfare programs. And for each welfare program, you have to jump through a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to qualify. It's just plain stupid. Misguided compassion has led to a tremendous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.

These compoundingly dissipative programs are not lifting people out of poverty. They are actually a poverty trap. The only people making out are the social workers drawing down a paycheck. Not that they are paid well. They are actually wonderful people working their asses off to help their fellow man.

But the administrators above them are making bank.

So what am I saying? Would I end all welfare programs?

Yes. Yes I would.

Before any heartless bastards applaud me, let me quickly add I would replace all those welfare programs with a single one.

Milton Friedman's "negative income tax".






So you see, I have not really wandered off the libertarian platform. :)

Someone, I forget who, has Thomas Sowell as their avatar. Check out the first video. :D



5. Entitlement Programs. Let's face it. We are stuck with Social Security and Medicare. I say "stuck" as if I oppose them. I don't.

However, we are living much longer than our ancestors did. Decades longer. It is insane and unsustainable that we start drawing from the national treasury at the same age they did.

We are living longer, we should be working longer. This is just plain common sense.

When Social Security was established in 1935, only 5.7 percent of the US population was over 65. The average American was not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security. SS was for the outliers. The actuarials were against you, especially if you were a blue collar worker.

Most Americans died with their boots on.

By 1965, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. This is the year Medicare was introduced to our entitlement package.

Today, 16 percent of Americans are over 65. Over the past 87 years, we have had a larger and larger percentage of the population drawing from the national treasury for longer and longer periods, while being supported by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

As I said, this is insane and unsustainable.

The retirement age should be indexed to an actuarial.

It so happens that 9 percent of our population is over the age of 70. The same percentage which was over 65 when Medicare was introduced.

I propose we raise the eligibility age to 70, and index it to 9 percent of the population going forward.

If one day there was a zombie apocalypse and half the country was wiped out, we would then lower the retirement age accordingly.


6. Health care. I am doing my best to avoid mentioning someone by name who everyone knows I detest. But it is the health care issue above all others which really pisses me off about him.

Not that he was the only one who pulled a hoax on the American people. The entire Republican party did long before he came down the shit pipe.

Health care costs have been skyrocketing for at least half a century. The Democrat answer to this problem was, is, and always will be what was originally called "socialize medicine" and is now known as Universal Health Care. The stigma of "socialized" has been removed by the ad men. :lol:

Ted Kennedy was not the first advocate, but he was the biggest. Both figuratively and literally, the fat bastard.

What I am saying is that for basically forever, the Democrats have been telegraphing exactly what their goal is. They did not make it a secret. They shouted it from the mountain. But for most of that time, they were screaming into the void.

But over all that time, the Democrats have succeeded in incrementally achieving the goal. George W. Bush even chipped in by creating a whole new government health care program to pander votes, and it has added more to the debt than Obamacare. Most right wingers are completely ignorance of this. Hell, Bush didn't even bother to try to offset the cost! At least Obama made an attempt to do so with the ACA.

Speaking of the ACA, which was a Great Leap Forward for socialized medicine, the Republicans immediately promised to repeal and replace Obamacare if they were given the power. This was the greatest political hoax of the modern era.

While they were out of power, the GOP passed, what, over 60 repeals knowing Obama would veto every one of those bills. But boy it was great theater for the rubes, wasn't it? They just kept voting for those hucksters until finally that glorious day arrived when the Republicans were given the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Then, suddenly, the GOP repeal and replacement program went dark. If that was not solid proof it had all been a hoax, then nothing is.

And yet the rubes didn't catch on! Unbelievable! They STILL have not caught on!

A "skinny repeal" was passed in the House on Trump's watch, and he did that repeat-a-lie-three-times thing he does. On the White House lawn, Trump held a party and prematurely ejaculated, stating, "“Make no mistake, (one!) “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake (two!) about it. Make no mistake.”(three!)


But it wasn't even close to a full repeal, and it certainly was not a replacement.

Hoax.

And who did the rubes get mad at?

John McCain.

You can't make this shit up.

As a result of all this hucksterism by Trump and the Republicans, Obamacare is now immortal. A third rail like Social Security and Medicare. Thanks, Drumpf!

The Democrats have moved the ball MUCH closer to the goal. UHC is now inevitable.

That's because the Republicans have never had a plan to get health care costs under control. They are too intellectually bankrupt, and so they have silently assented to UHC. They sold us all down the river to UHC decades ago.

Decades ago.

So what is G5000's plan for better health care?

Go ahead and call me a commie Democrat Biden-loving groomer homo, but I believe we have to get the government the fuck out of health care entirely.

With the exception of Medicare I described above.

Ladies and gentlemen, the government is the biggest player in the healthcare market, and they get to write the rules for their private sector competitors! Does it get more fucking commie than that!?!?


You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


I'm not one for conspiracy theories as you all well know. But the fact you CANNOT pick up your phone and call ANY health insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the health insurance which best suits your needs IS a vast bipartisan conspiracy.

You are deliberately being held hostage to your employer insurance. How's that been working for you?

You know how I feel about exemptions, deductions, and credits. Well, the tax deduction corporations get for employer-sponsored health insurance is bending the cost of healthcare UP.

Obama worked very hard to keep that alive. It was a big boon he gave to labor unions.

So that's my solution to healthcare. Get government the fuck out, and let Americans be able to call any health insurance company in America and negotiate for the best insurance which fits their needs.

The best part is that if you bundle all your insurance together with one insurance company, you get big discounts.

No, actually the best part is that you would be able to take your health insurance with you wherever you go. You would no longer be hostage to your employer. You know when you get a new job and you have to wait several months before they let you into their health plan and you pray to god you don't need medical care in the meantime?

That bullshit is gone.

FREEDOM, BABY!



I have more. Lots more. But I hope the point has been driven home.

If I'm in the mood, I will add more items in the coming days.




You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY car insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the car insurance which best suits your needs?

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY life insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the life insurance which best suits your needs?

Avoid whole life insurance. Those are a scam. Go with term life insurance. And tell your beneficiaries to punch any insurance person who tries to tell them to accept your life insurance in annuities right in their fat gob. That's another scam. Tell your survivors to take the lump sum. My dad was an underwriter for 30 years, this is him talking.

But I digress.

You know how you can pick up your phone and dial ANY home insurance company in America and personally negotiate for the home insurance which best suits your needs?


This all bullshit, there is no negotiating at all. Property Casualty and Life insurance is set up as a "buffet". You pick and choose what you and pay what they ask. You don't get a quote for $200 and then counter with "I'll give you $150.
 

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