2025 Political Thread

[TH2002]

Colorado just passed some of the most bs gun control laws I’ve ever seen:

Colorado now has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the country

Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday signed into law what may be the toughest gun control regulations in state history.

www.cbsnews.com

Though I’m sure California would love to follow suit.

 

[UpperLevelLOL]

How is it the liberal naysayers and doomsayers who say tariffs will lead to inflation and a major recession don't believe that taxing the rich and big corporations so that they "pay their fair share" won't lead to inflation and recession?

....because they are two entirely separate income streams and impact the economy differently? When you tax literally every good coming into the country, the costs of those goods go up, this is basic economics. When you tax Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg...what costs do they forward to the consumer? We're not buying anything from them personally. Also, taxing larger corporations doesn't tax *all* goods, just the goods of massive conglomerates, which coincidentally gives mom and pop shops a chance to compete against bigger corporations.

When we've done tariffs in the past (Smoot-Hawley for example), they've deepened recessions and slowed growth. When we've had high tax rates on the wealthy and corporations in the past (1950s for example, when the tax rate for the wealthy was at 90+%), we've had significant economic prosperity and decreasing inequality.

The fact that you have to even ask this question suggests you should do some reading up on economic history and introductory international political economy. You thinking they are the same things and shape markets similarly betrays a profound ignorance of how economics work.

 

[AJS]

I genuinely don’t even know what to say about what this country is going through right now that hasn’t already been said.

 

[Anti Marine Layer]

That’s awesome that you only argued against the education portion.

I did your silly quiz. Here’s the result:
View attachment 39440

I finally looked at it, but it says people in that group like Trump a lot. You don't seem to like him and though he's definitely not a great Christian example, he's much better than anyone on the left who find freedom of speech and freedom of religion a threat to their abortion agenda and rights for men to play in women's sports or to be called by their preferred pronouns.

 

[Anti Marine Layer]

....because they are two entirely separate income streams and impact the economy differently? When you tax literally every good coming into the country, the costs of those goods go up, this is basic economics. When you tax Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg...what costs do they forward to the consumer? We're not buying anything from them personally. Also, taxing larger corporations doesn't tax *all* goods, just the goods of massive conglomerates, which coincidentally gives mom and pop shops a chance to compete against bigger corporations.

When we've done tariffs in the past (Smoot-Hawley for example), they've deepened recessions and slowed growth. When we've had high tax rates on the wealthy and corporations in the past (1950s for example, when the tax rate for the wealthy was at 90+%), we've had significant economic prosperity and decreasing inequality.

The fact that you have to even ask this question suggests you should do some reading up on economic history and introductory international political economy. You thinking they are the same things and shape markets similarly betrays a profound ignorance of how economics work.

If companies have to pay more taxes they will raise their prices or possibly go out of business. In California with the minimum wage of $20.00/hour some companies have already gone out of business or raised their prices.

The fact that more than 50% of Democrat voters would prefer socialism over capitalism today shows an ignorance of the history of socialism. Progressive tax rates directly come from Karl Marx's playbook. It is not right to steal from the rich to help the poor. The government is not a charity.

 

[UpperLevelLOL]

If companies have to pay more taxes they will raise their prices or possibly go out of business. In California with the minimum wage of $20.00/hour some companies have already gone out of business or raised their prices.

The fact that more than 50% of Democrat voters would prefer socialism over capitalism today shows an ignorance of the history of socialism. Progressive tax rates directly come from Karl Marx's playbook. It is not right to steal from the rich to help the poor. The government is not a charity.

Oh man, where to start.

First, you’re now moving goal posts from higher taxes to higher minimum wage, which are two entirely different proposals. Again, you flail around and change your argument whenever it faces even the tiniest bit of critical thought.

Second, you’re continuing to show your utter ignorance of economic theory by thinking that taxes on the wealthy are “directly from Marx’s playbook.” Marx calls for the direct seizure of capital by the state and the eradication of private property, not higher taxes rates. Marx goes after the wealthy by stripping them of their control of the means of production, not by raising the marginal tax rate of the top bracket by 20 points. Republican and Democrat presidents alike have had high tax rates on the wealthy, and none were communist. Seriously, please educate yourself at least a little bit before posting or else you risk looking even more clueless.

 

[bjdeming]

I genuinely don’t even know what to say about what this country is going through right now that hasn’t already been said.

There will be more to say, as time passes and the "Make America Gasp" Adventure continues.

 

[bjdeming]

Torched a perfectly good economy for zero reason

Reason (hopefully, too paranoid to be true): The idea is to bring overseas work back to the US, right? That means addressing the US "issues" that led to offshoring: environmental regulation, unionization and resulting benefits and good wages, etc.

Make people desperate enough, they'll look the other way as you eliminate the regulation, break the unions, cut minimum wage laws as a "crisis" measure, etc.

Automating jobs is one way to do this, and fairly painless to the people doing the automating if their complaints department and most other public faces are AI.

But you've also got to hard-crash the economy to make it stick, and then keep people desperate.

This isn't going to happen overnight, and it isn't going to be just a GOP TOP thing. The whole oligarchy must be in on it to make it work.

I thought of this today -- call it paranoia, please! -- after realizing the similarity between the sense of helplessness one feels now at Congress dragging their feet and the press not doing their job -- after seeing them in action on Nixon, I know what they should be doing on, say, that Musk/Palantir/"hackathon" thing, and they almost completely buried the huge "Hands Off" turnout -- and the sense of helplessness over the 2024 presidential election.

We are not being given popular choices and I don't think that's accidental. And it's so "soft" that you just flounder around trying to define it, let alone fight it. That is not coincidental, either.

I'm not especially a fan of Ezra Levin, and some of the groups associated with that Indivisible.org that he's with give me the creeps (honesty is the first step towards letting go of hate that others can use to manipulate you -- life lesson, that).

But I think, taking a long view, that we are in an e pluribus unum moment here, and if we fail...

...well, all this now will be the Golden Age, the Good Old Days.

And maybe some investors see this far ahead and realize what the US might be in for and so are no longer viewing our bonds as a good, stable option.

 

[bjdeming]

They're Frankensteining "dire wolves" these days (really, genetically modified gray wolves) -- how are we gonna Frankenstein the Tea Party and Indivisible?



We all love the same thing -- a vision of America, summed up via slogans, perhaps, as a light upon the hill and a chicken in every pot -- in much the same way.

What is needed is the return of faith -- in religion, yes (disclosure FWIW, though it's irrelevant here: I'm a fundamentalist Theravadan Buddhist), but in its key and unifying aspect where we bow to something greater than us and then look up and discover that we are not alone: other people exist and they're a lot like us.

But the bow and the bended knee must first happen.

How much easier it seems to take pride in separating politics from religion, and then arguing politics with all the fervor of a religious war.

And look where it's got us.

 

[maroonedinhsv]

I finally looked at it, but it says people in that group like Trump a lot. You don't seem to like him and though he's definitely not a great Christian example, he's much better than anyone on the left who find freedom of speech and freedom of religion a threat to their abortion agenda and rights for men to play in women's sports or to be called by their preferred pronouns.

Like I said, it was a silly quiz. The questions were overly simplistic. However, I answered holding to my conservative views and that was the result.

I don’t like Trump, because I don’t think he represents the values that I indicated in your silly quiz. There were no questions relating to policy implementation in the quiz, nor were there questions about character traits that I want in a leader. A racist homophobic misogynist could’ve answered the same way that I did for very different reasons (hmmmm). The fact that people in that category “like Trump a lot” should tell you that most people vote for the letter by the person’s name rather than the person himself.

 

[Anti Marine Layer]

Like I said, it was a silly quiz. The questions were overly simplistic. However, I answered holding to my conservative views and that was the result.

I don’t like Trump, because I don’t think he represents the values that I indicated in your silly quiz. There were no questions relating to policy implementation in the quiz, nor were there questions about character traits that I want in a leader. A racist homophobic misogynist could’ve answered the same way that I did for very different reasons (hmmmm). The fact that people in that category “like Trump a lot” should tell you that most people vote for the letter by the person’s name rather than the person himself.

According to that website, it says the following:

Faith and Flag Conservatives are a political group characterized by their strong religious beliefs, staunch conservatism on social and economic issues, and deep loyalty to the Republican Party and Donald Trump. They make up about 10% of the public and are known for advocating a prominent role for religion in public life and a strong military stance in international affairs.

The Republican Party is far from perfect, but with the Democrats slowly drifting towards communism, the Republicans are still the lesser of two evils. Deomcrats want to arrest people who silently pray near abortion clinics and put them in prison for years and yet they let the George Floyd rioters go free. Kamala at one point wanted to use our tax money to pay for transgender surgeries of illegal immigrants in prison. They claim that voter ID is racist, even though a majority of both White and Black people support requiring an ID to vote. Also something like 80% of the population doesn't want biological men in women's sports and locker rooms, but according to the left, that's transphobic and you can get fired from your job or banned from playing sports if you disagree. In some states like CA and CO, parents can be separated from their children if they disagree with their gender identity.

I know someone in my church who doesn't like Trump either, but that person said she'd NEVER vote for Kamala or any Democrat today. People also have to explain why if he's such a racist, more Black people and Hispanic people voted for him than any Republican in 50 years.

 

[UpperLevelLOL]

According to that website, it says the following:



The Republican Party is far from perfect, but with the Democrats slowly drifting towards communism, they are still the lesser of two evils. They want to arrest people who silently pray near abortion clinics and put them in prison for years and yet they let the George Floyd rioters go free. Kamala at one point wanted to use our tax money to pay for transgender surgeries of illegal immigrants in prison. They claim that voter ID is racist, even though a majority of both White and Black people support requiring an ID to vote. Also something like 80% of the population doesn't want biological men in women's sports and locker rooms, but according to the left, that's transphobic and you can get fired from your job, banning from playing sports if you disagree. In some states like CA and CO, parents can be separated from their children if they disagree with their gender identity.

I know someone in my church who doesn't like Trump either, but that person said she'd NEVER vote for Kamala or any Democrat today.

People also have to explain why if he's such a racist, more Black people and Hispanic people voted for him than any Republican in 50 years.

Man, this is just more nonsense. The Democrats are not "slowly drifting towards communism," that is just pure GOP propaganda. Nor do they "want to arrest people who silently pray near abortion clinics" so long as they stay on public property. At least try to have good faith discussions rather than regurgitate everything your algorithm spits at you. And voter ID laws absolutely do have a racial outcome, regardless of their level of support. You can read more about it here (though I doubt you will since you're inherently incurious about anything that challenges your narrow, bigoted worldview):

The Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of Color

Studies show that new laws will disproportionately harm voters of color. Federal legislation is necessary.

www.brennancenter.org

Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes | IPPSR

ippsr.msu.edu

How ID Requirements Harm Marginalized Communities and Their Right to Vote

A report from last fall highlights how ID requirements, often which are unnecessary, create serious burdens in everyday life — especially for minority communities.

www.democracydocket.com

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/resources/voice-of-experience/2024-september/impact-of-voter-id-laws-on-older-adults/

https://esra.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1556/2020/11/hajnal.pdf

And even with this support, the majority of minorty voters supported Harris over Trump.

 

[maroonedinhsv]

According to that website, it says the following:



The Republican Party is far from perfect, but with the Democrats slowly drifting towards communism, the Republicans are still the lesser of two evils. Deomcrats want to arrest people who silently pray near abortion clinics and put them in prison for years and yet they let the George Floyd rioters go free. Kamala at one point wanted to use our tax money to pay for transgender surgeries of illegal immigrants in prison. They claim that voter ID is racist, even though a majority of both White and Black people support requiring an ID to vote. Also something like 80% of the population doesn't want biological men in women's sports and locker rooms, but according to the left, that's transphobic and you can get fired from your job or banned from playing sports if you disagree. In some states like CA and CO, parents can be separated from their children if they disagree with their gender identity.

I know someone in my church who doesn't like Trump either, but that person said she'd NEVER vote for Kamala or any Democrat today. People also have to explain why if he's such a racist, more Black people and Hispanic people voted for him than any Republican in 50 years.

I’m guessing you didn’t fare very well on the “reading comprehension” portions of standardized testing. You keep failing to understand that the majority of the people on here that are opposed to Trump are, in fact, Republican and conservative.

 

[Aaron Rider]

....because they are two entirely separate income streams and impact the economy differently? When you tax literally every good coming into the country, the costs of those goods go up, this is basic economics. When you tax Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg...what costs do they forward to the consumer? We're not buying anything from them personally. Also, taxing larger corporations doesn't tax *all* goods, just the goods of massive conglomerates, which coincidentally gives mom and pop shops a chance to compete against bigger corporations.

When we've done tariffs in the past (Smoot-Hawley for example), they've deepened recessions and slowed growth. When we've had high tax rates on the wealthy and corporations in the past (1950s for example, when the tax rate for the wealthy was at 90+%), we've had significant economic prosperity and decreasing inequality.

The fact that you have to even ask this question suggests you should do some reading up on economic history and introductory international political economy. You thinking they are the same things and shape markets similarly betrays a profound ignorance of how economics work.

I'm not saying I support tariffs in this case. And, in fact, I'm generally not interested in discussing politics here for a variety of reasons.

But you really shouldn't write something as aggressive as your last paragraph without looking at American economic history before Hoover and Roosevelt. And I want to give everyone something to think about.

If the world is so different now, why is it okay to compare the results of one tariff in the midst of an economic downturn in 1930, but not federal fiscal policy and its results for a solid 50 years from 1865-1915? For 50 years, this country's fiscal policy was built around the concept of a limited federal government funded primarily by tariffs. This was not some strange aberration based around the Republican Party's post-Civil War ideology either; examine the history of how Germany went from a country where people left to come to North America to an economic powerhouse by 1900. As for results here, we went from a country where half the country was in ruins after the war with the other half (the North) not untroubled either (ask my great-great grandfather, who was crippled from wounds at Gettysburg in the Union Army - many scars marked the North, if more subtly than in the ex-Confederacy) to a world power.

Second, there's always an attempt to blame the Depression on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. It's silly. We were 8-15 months into the Great Depression when it was passed. I would agree that it didn't make things better, and I'd probably agree that it made things worse. But it most definitely did not cause it. It is also very apparent that the severe downturn in 1938 was not caused by anything in our foreign trade policy, but I won't digress on 1938.

My complaint with Trump? It's that he is pushing tariffs instead of working to put us back on the gold standard. Once again, I don't think either side is addressing the real problems economically. Make no mistake, transitioning back to the gold standard will not be painless. Functionally, our economy for 2-3 generations has been comparable to someone with a drug problem, and the withdrawal is going to SUCK, especially if your life is built around owning debt. But it's the only way to restore consistently solid economics to this country. There is very little political push for it for a variety of primarily selfish, short-term reasons. If you genuinely want to reduce inequality and make sure that rises in GDP are CONNECTED to rises in the living standards of Americans, then you need to examine why it is that ONLY after we went off the GS (technically, in the 1970s, it was the gold EXCHANGE standard) that wages stopped increasing in concert WITH GDP. And that's despite remarkably different Presidents ranging from Coolidge to Johnson.

 

[UpperLevelLOL]

I'm not saying I support tariffs in this case. And, in fact, I'm generally not interested in discussing politics here for a variety of reasons.

But you really shouldn't write something as aggressive as your last paragraph without looking at American economic history before Hoover and Roosevelt. And I want to give everyone something to think about.

If the world is so different now, why is it okay to compare the results of one tariff in the midst of an economic downturn in 1930, but not federal fiscal policy and its results for a solid 50 years from 1865-1915? For 50 years, this country's fiscal policy was built around the concept of a limited federal government funded primarily by tariffs. This was not some strange aberration based around the Republican Party's post-Civil War ideology either; examine the history of how Germany went from a country where people left to come to North America to an economic powerhouse by 1900.

Second, there's always an attempt to blame the Depression on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. It's silly. We were 8-15 months into the Great Depression when it was passed. I would agree that it didn't make things better, and I'd probably agree that it made things worse. But it most definitely did not cause it.

My complaint with Trump? It's that he is pushing tariffs instead of working to put us back on the gold standard. Make no mistake, transitioning back to the gold standard will not be painless. Functionally, our economy for 2-3 generations has been comparable to someone with a drug problem, and the withdrawal is going to SUCK, especially if your life is built around owning debt. But it's the only way to restore consistently solid economics to this country. There is very little political push for it for a variety of primarily selfish, short-term reasons. If you genuinely want to reduce inequality and make sure that rises in GDP are CONNECTED to rises in the living standards of Americans, then you need to examine why it is that ONLY after we went off the GS (technically, in the 1970s, it was the gold EXCHANGE standard) did wages stop increasing WITH GDP.

Woof, this is a really poor understanding of history. Smoot-Hawley absolutely deepened the depression. Sure it didn't spark Black Friday, but international political economic scholarship is pretty clear that it absolutely made the depression worse (and global) and lengthened the timeline of recovery. In fact, even the prospect of Smoot-Hawley and attempting to "price it in" to the market probably steepened the impact of Black Friday. Don't take my word for it though, you can read more about it here:

https://www.cato.org/blog/smoot-hawley-tariff-great-depression

The Catastrophic Results of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1929-30

What exactly was Smoot-Hawley? Its stated purpose sounds eerily similar to the goals that Trump has espoused. It was, said its title, “an Act to provide revenue, to regulate commerce with foreign countries, to encourage the industries of the United States, to protect American labor, and for...

fee.org

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w5509/w5509.pdf

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c13858/c13858.pdf

 

[UpperLevelLOL]

Turns out Americans don’t really want to work in manufacturing jobs…why are we trying to reshore this again?

 

[TH2002]

Turns out Americans don’t really want to work in manufacturing jobs…why are we trying to reshore this again?

To be fair, I do think at least a fair chunk of the 73% who think they wouldn't be better off actually would be if working in a factory helped them get off their donkey and lose weight.

 

[KoD]

I can't get over the irony of @Anti Marine Layer trashing the far left when he's literally the equivalent of his own propaganda but on the right. Dude needs to look in the mirror.
I'm glad this board has so many level-headed conservatives that are calling out this users antics. His partisan hatred is the disease that will ruin this nation. We are in this together, left and right, to make society better for everyone however we can and our disagreements should make us stronger. That's our unified goal and most of you give me reassurance that is still present and real in this troubling climate. I'm saddened that our apparent radicalist @Anti Marine Layer is more than motivated to perpetuate falsehoods and seems entirely oblivious to how destructive his ideas are to the wellbeing of himself and this nation.

 

[bjdeming]

Speaking of the 1860s, some 2020s British voices are saying things that sound a little similar to what some of their compatriots were saying on a different topic a few years before that was settled in 1865:

...The US is now negotiating with...itself. The rest of the world will just see how this plays out now.

-- Source

Eighty years of close alliance...gone, now, along with those trillions of USD.

Also, a notable figure in the Civil War/War Between the States raised a question that's still unanswered today although today's "individuals, too few" aren't discontented but rich and powerful enough to see themselves as above the law (though not yet willing to defy it openly) and they have, not Columbiads, but unprecedented manipulation and personal-privacy-invasion potential because of computers:

...the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy--a government of the people by the same people--can or can not maintain its...integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

-- Source

Resisted the temptation to substitute "DOGE" for "break up," but I took out the word "territorial" because it is so old fashioned compared to the microscale/individual (you and me) control these people are going after with their "hackathons," Social Security number cancellations, etc.

 

[andyhb]

Trump saying that homegrown "terrorists" (whatever the hell that means in this administration), meaning US citizens, are next to El Salvador.