Launch Date Announced 🚀 The brand-new GoComics will be unveiled April 1! (No fooling). See more information here. Subscribers, check your
email for more details.
“Doing a few things that align with a more leftist agenda doesn’t make you a leftist.”
I agree. A hero to a leftist doesn’t have to be a leftist. They just need to do something that substantially advances the leftist agenda. Among other things, Nixon eliminated convertibility of the dollar to gold, thus making the dollar a “pure” fiat currency, allowing money printers to go “brrr.” That enabled the kind of infinite spending leftists need for their agenda, and could not otherwise have had.
Allowing people who earned their resources through their own efforts to keep them isn’t a handout, it’s what the government was enacted to do in the first place.
EVs may or may not be a good thing, but the basic principle of capitalism is that the people decide that through their exchanges in a free market, not one where some oligarch or apparatchik presses their finger on the scale. If EVs make economic sense (“the juice is worth the squeeze”), then consumers will buy them. As individual consumers are in different economic circumstances and may have different sets of values (the government is not intended to, nor has the power to dictate ethics), not everyone will think so until the price of electricity drops low enough and the price of oil products increases enough.
Inflation changes and ACA cost reduction, if any, may have been due to normal fluctuations in economic activity, there is little evidence that separates the two. In the former case recovering from the budget-busting handouts by both Trump(1) and Biden, in the latter case because of a general recessionary period after the passage of the ACA. Many private healthcare costs (i.e. out of pocket spending) were transferred to the Medicare/Medicaid budges due to their coverage expansions so the net to the taxpayer seems to have been a loss, but that is not well studied either. While the availability of coverage increased (i.e. more people got insurance), the cost to the taxpayer to do so via the massive changes ACA brought (in particular forced coverage of conditions most might not want or need) could have been performed with a much simpler provision of insurance to the needy.
I agree that a “public option” may have made more sense for people living near the poverty line. However, health care is NOT a power constitutionally granted to the federal government, so by the 10th amendment is reserved to the states, and thus the “public option” would need to be established by each state if they so choose.
You still haven’t pointed out specific examples of the budget-busting handouts you are complaining about. Kindly pay attention to how one conducts debate. Ad hominem attacks just point out the weakness of your own argument.
I’m not sure what budget-busting handouts to the rich you’re referring to. The support of EVs, a good part of Elon’s wealth growth via Tesla, was instituted by democrats, if you fail to remember. Certainly the inaptly named “inflation reduction act” was more of a wet dream for the left doing nothing for the economy or inflation, and the ACA for the most part made health care costs grow faster and become less affordable.
The majority of the budget goes to entitlement programs, which for the most part the rich are not entitled to (or have to pay up for, e.g. via IRMAA payments for medicare) and defense which if anything we are underspending on given our vulnerabilities to cyber attacks and a shrinking navy.
There are progressives in the republicans as well. Anyone in favor of the “administrative state” is a progressive. That includes Nixon, who I’m sure is a forgotten hero of the extreme left.
Well my taxes certainly went up thanks to the original “cuts”, entirely due to the SALT limitations (I live in NY, in the top 5% of high-tax states). Most of the really wealthy just moved to Florida, but I don’t think they were thrilled with having to uproot from their fancy digs to get a tax cut (as substantial as it would have been getting away from the northeast).
But… “voting with your feet” is also a thing. Interestingly enough, NY then promptly raised taxes even more due to the funding losses, driving out more semi-wealthy people, i.e. the “productive class”, and jacking up the minimum wage and union support. Progressives just love spending other people’s money.
Hot oil and pitch more likely. Lead was expensive, and takes a long time to heat up a cauldron-full. Mostly it would have been used (in small quantities) for construction.
If we took the 4th seriously, the government wouldn’t be able to root around in our private life in the first place. And they have no constitutional business screwing up health care, home ownership or groceries either.
“Doing a few things that align with a more leftist agenda doesn’t make you a leftist.”
I agree. A hero to a leftist doesn’t have to be a leftist. They just need to do something that substantially advances the leftist agenda. Among other things, Nixon eliminated convertibility of the dollar to gold, thus making the dollar a “pure” fiat currency, allowing money printers to go “brrr.” That enabled the kind of infinite spending leftists need for their agenda, and could not otherwise have had.