Democrats Debate in Las Vegas

[quote name='Shard']</p>

I disagree with your first point completely, sure alot of minimum wage jobs are kids but there are a lot of people who have children very young and are forced to get any job they can to support their families. I know a lot of people in this position personally, and sure if someone sticks with a job for a long time then they will not be making minimum wage but to start a life for them and their children a lot will need to.</p>

Second, I believe that Democrats are much better at providing help for people, the programs are to support needy people, not to give them all the money they need and let them live easily. I believe that the Democrat philosophy is a better head start than Republicans.</p>

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Why not give them the money they need to NOT BE POOR? The govt. measures this thing called the "poverty level" which is a level of income that is not living "easy." It's something like $18K / year for a family of 3. The programs should encourage savings and capital formation, so people can get ahead of that poverty level on their own steam.</p>

I'm not a republican, so I'm not here suggesting that their proposals are any better. They had control of congress since 1994 and congress + executive for the first 6 years of Bush and look at how big government grew and without shutting down the useless programs.</p>

What I'm suggesting is common sense to me, and I actually care about people </p>

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At ANY level of income you can save money. Heck at some point you get a car loan and over time pay it off and own the car - that's an asset, and you've saved money.</p>

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You didn't answer the trivia question, so I'll answer it. Truman was the first to propose universal health care. You'd think that after 50+ years of making the same promise and failing to deliver that you might get the hint that it's truly an empty promise (and for good reason).</p>

Socialized medicine is one of the worst things I can imagine (a topic for another thread, perhaps?). What's caused the bad things in the system we have IS the involvement of government and making it more socialized a bit at a time. At some point, you're going to drive away the really good doctors who want to make a lot of money. You'll drive out innovation - our broken system still provides 95%+ of all the new innovation in drugs and treatments in the world! The VA is a perfect example of what universal health care would be like, and it's terrible. In spite of the high prices (which IS something to address) of our system, it far more rapidly adjusts to the needs of the population (e.g. shutting down big hospitals in favor of lots more neighborhood clinics, etc.).</p>

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I have nothing against Obama, but I don't think he's particularly any different than any of the others running. The really different guy was Bush, frankly. He reversed 75+ years of Wilsonian Diplomacy (you know, installing banana dicators and otherwise supporting horrible "friendly" regimes), and blew up the size of govt. (hardly a republican thing to do), pre-emptive war, and that kind of thing. "Change" isn't popular as you might think! </p>

The only REAL change candidate is Ron Paul. Or the Libertarian Party candidate.</p>

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Your last sentence here is the biggie.</p>

I happen to be a big proponent of deficit spending - what matters is the amount of deficit and what it's spent on. Government is a strange bird - if it borrows too much, it crowds out borrowing ability for the private sector, and if it has too much of a surplus, it crowds out savings ability for the private sector. Borrowing by govt. is the actual means that govt. uses to redistribute wealth - it's the rich that can afford to buy the T-Bills, the govt. ends up with some % of the wealthy's assets (vs. income, a big deal!), and it pays them back in the form of interest (dollars at future inflated values). No question in my mind that the govt. should crowd out borrowing (encourage savings) and take the wealth/assets of the wealthy (and on a voluntary basis, without taxation!).</p>

The debt isn't a big issue, period. The big issue is the unfunded LIABILITIES that your favorite social programs represent. Our debt is $9T, our liabilities are $75T and growing (thanks to Bush's medicare prescription drug program and those kinds of things). Think about it this way. If you buy a house, it's going to be several times your yearly income, yet you can afford the payments. The $9T represents the nation buying a "house" but for far less than a single year's income (GDP is $14T or so). The $75T in liabilities are bills that will be due and are certain to exceed our ability to pay them.</p>

This is america tho, and you have 52% in favor of prudent use of the military abroad and 48% in favor of reckless social spending. (See how that works? </p>

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You misrepresent what I wrote. I said that Democrats oppose change to THEIR PET PROGRAMS. I see Social Security as a Ponzi Scheme that cannot help but collapse of its own weight. It could and should be a sound program that provides people with a dignified standard of living at retirement. As it is, I cannot fathom how a couple can live on $1400/month that it provides. Yet ANY proposal to move in that direction meets fierce resistance.</p>

And while I'm a fan of Clinton, I already pointed out how reversing the deficit wasn't such a good thing (btw, all balanced budgets by the govt. have resulted in near immediate recession and even decades of poor economic conditions, since 1900 or so). I'd also point out that while Clinton and his economic advisors were out there telling us that the economy was in the sweet spot, Greenspan was out there talking about "irrational exhuberance." Clinton's economy was built on taxing the wealth of the common person (they borrowed against their homes in a housing bubble to pay their taxes), and that chicken is now coming home to roost. At the same time, it was the republican congress that balanced the budget - in fact it was John Kasick who wrote the budgets in the House; unfortunately he's out of government these days. Clinton struggled against balancing the budget, promising to do it at some nebulous point down the road - repeatedly giving different time frames, hardly a plan to do it by a date certain.</p>

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