Totally agree….profitable companies shouldn’t get welfare/tax breaks. Non profitable companies shouldn’t be artificially propped up forever (unless they’re essential).

I would go farther…tax leeway at first to help them become established companies, but if they accept the tax breaks and still fail, the company assets should be forfeit to repay the taxes unpaid like any other debt. If you accept a break and succeed, pay it back over your first profitable decade with slightly higher taxes. Help up, not handouts. That’s my druthers.

Massive corporate welfare for extremely profitable companies is abhorrent to me….just like tax breaks for the ultra rich.

While I agree, he should get paid handsomely for this abuse, I, for one, am getting pretty tired of paying higher taxes that go to pay for these payouts. I think they should come out of the police (or in this case, park ranger) pension funds, then when they're gone, union coffers, then payroll, equipment funds, and lastly from state government discretionary funding. Not one penny more should be given out until all police funding is exhausted. You would see these incidents drop to zero if that were the case, and these officers wouldn't ever get rehired because they are liabilities to the bank accounts of any force that hires them.

Lol.
I'M not a drunk, Bob. Funny you think that's a solution to disappointment. Nothing like a depressant to chase away the blues, eh. That's as logical as anything else you believe.

BIDEN is losing coherency!?! Compared to Trump, he's like a professional spoken word poet.

Keep dreaming. Trump won't get any democrats, even the disillusioned. They'll stay home. This isn't 2016 when the Democrats cheated themselves to put up the worst possible candidate, Clinton, who drove republicans, independents, and disillusioned democrats to the polls to vote for Trump even more than Trump did, and he still had 3000000 fewer votes.

Higher taxes beats bankruptcy, which is our path under Trump. Funny, 4 years ago and for 8 years before then the growing debt was all important and proof of Obama's failure, now it a nothing burger, but no, you aren't a brainless hypocrite, no, never.

The democratic party is so left that in the 80's they would have been far right wingers.

No, they'll avoid the armed thugs Trump is sending out to intimidate voters and vote by mail in waves. I just hope enough go to the polls or drop boxes and avoid the post office altogether so Trump's main plan to rig the election by decimating the post office intentionally will be castrated.

Trump could win, but it won't be legitimate if he does, and won't be recognised internationally because they aren't duped like you. He's made certain it won't be a fair or open election in every way possible, even ways that are clearly illegal, the world knows it.

Don't worry about me.

You just get a bottle for election night so you can cry you massive loss.
Biden is is losing coherency, mentally diminishing. Un-electable.

Trump will get Democrats that are fed up with their defund police, pro riots, anti cop positions. Not to forget the stupid foolish green new deal, higher taxes and legalize illegals.

Democrat party is so left that no one will be voting for it election night.

They will cause mass chaos with the mail in voting. But will still loose.

Yep, the answer to any problem from you, cut taxes. Military underfunded, cut taxes. Can't afford universal health care, cut taxes. Debt and deficit are bigger than GDP, cut taxes. Infrastructure crumbling, cut taxes. Daddy Trump's businesses are struggling, cut taxes, especially theirs.

How many trillions more do they need? How much of that goes directly into Trump's families pockets? They already took dozens, up to hundreds of millions last round despite being specifically banned from the program.

Democrats want higher taxes because we like America being a sovereign nation, and bankrupting us into third world status could change that. When the final numbers for 2020 come out, I bet you that dinner you still owe me it will be double the deficit of any other year in history or worse, $6 trillion+ in spending and another trillion+ in lost taxes from lost production thanks to not shutting down in March-May....on top of the trillion+ deficit built into the budget.....and we're heading into a global depression with this deep debt, making borrowing money near impossible.

2021 is going to be a disaster too, no matter who's elected. Trump has ensured it. Any company that can afford to leave is leaving already, bud. They took the handouts from Trump and in pure Trump fashion took the cash and ignored what it was for, many using that money for expansions outside America, companies like Harley Davidson.

JOBS JOBS JOBS will do wonders to turn around poverty.

Cutting taxes for companies to come in and create jobs is a good start.

Democrats seem to want higher taxes so Companies and those who can afford to leave, leave.

I like Bernie, but his answer to "how do we pay for your plans?" seems to always be "We tax the rich more." That seems naive imo.
I agree, the extremely rich should pay way more, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that higher tax rates for the top 5% can pay to revamp our entire society. We are too deep in debt, and too shallow in our commitments towards the public, whether those commitments come in the form of investments in education, health, infrastructure, the legal system, prison reforms, ecology, climate change, .....the list of things we put on the back burner and ignore is long and fraught with perils far more pressing than, let's say a fence, or golf outings, trade wars, or another aircraft carrier.

As to the Castro ridiculousness, get a grip people. I can give you an example of something Hitler did that everyone, including holocaust survivors, can agree was a great thing he did.....he killed Hitler. If your ideological blinders and hatred are so thick you can't admit bad people/systems might also do some good things sometimes, you have a serious problem accepting reality and you need therapy.

I wouldn't say we should abolish billionaires, but ALL tax loop holes should be closed and they should pay a significantly higher tax rate...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

This attitude is prevalent in Nordic countries. As the article states, there has been some slight movement away from Janteloven, but not very much. It is precisely this attitude that allows for people to accept drastically higher taxes, not just for the 1%, but across the board. The social culture is dramatically different in the USA, possibly to our detriment.

Per capita means nothing. All NATO states are supposed to be spending at least 2% of their GDP towards defense. As I said, Norway spends around 1.2% of their GDP, if the USA did the same, we would have a massive amount of money for social programs. Again, I must stress that I am not slamming Norway or other Nordic countries for not reaching the 2%, I am simply pointing out additional reasons why they have more money available for social programs than we do.

I don't see what developmental aid has to do with anything. I am sure Norway spends money in other places as well. I am pointing out why socialism works in Nordic countries and why it would be a hard sell in the USA.

I understand that you are happy with your situation. In a perfect world, we could all follow a similar rule. Unfortunately to fit into that type of situation you need a population that is of relatively the same mind. In most larger nations that is impossible, there are too many different groups that have competing ideals.

I'm sure I've heard him say both, but perhaps he just misspoke. In writing, he does say she pays a higher tax rate.

@jwray I think genetic factors play a role in how aggressive someone is, I just think that in a society as genetically diverse as the US it will be impossible that that is the difference compared to other countries. My guess is that genes only explain a small part of gun violence, and no more than in other countries.

I think the vast majority of the high gun violence can be explained by culture. The US is a dog eat dog world. The mindset of the country seems to be Ann Randish / Neo Liberal / Right compared to similar countries in the rest of the world. The US seems to prefer personal freedom over common good.

In a country with that state of mind, you tend to get that everyone fights for themselves and there is less willingness to compromise. Everyone becomes defensive. Throw in poverty (another part of the same mindset) and guns and you get an explosive mix.

It is a classic prisoner dilemma. Everyone would be better off if they cooperate, yet because of lack of trust everyone defects.

Japan is one of the many places that shows what you can achieve with more social safety. It costs higher taxes and less personal freedom, you get back less death.

*promote

i would like to say a few things.

first,
i would personally like to welcome my anti-war democrats back to the party.it appears it only took voting in the worlds most successful used car salesmen and professional internet troll to get you fuckers to get off the bench.

saved a seat for ya!../pats seat

second,
while i can admire this woman's passion and self righteous indignation,i refuse to accept her moral condescension,because for all her flowery and bombastic condemnation of anyone who voted for trump was a vote for:racism,sexism,bigotry and hatred,and implies she has deep understanding the motivations for voting trump.

i submit that she does not.
i submit that she is a hypocrite.

i submit that while she decries her anger and outrage at the moral ineptitude of her fellow americans for failing to rebuke an obviously unqualified candidate,who openly used racist and sexist rhetoric to appeal to our most base fears and anxieties.

she was missing the main point.the main reason.

so while she stood upon her ivory tower aghast at the horror unfolding in front of her on election night,she STILL did not get it.

she watched in horror as her fellow americans ignored trumps obvious racism.
ignored the sexism.
ignored the proto-fascist verbiage.
ignored the narcissism and petty tantrums.
ignored pretty much everything leading an election night into the surreal and absurd.

because she didn't get it,and obviously STILL doesn't get it.

because voting trump was not a vote for:racism,sexism,bigotry or hatred.
a vote for trump was a "fuck you" vote.
a trump vote was a "no confidence" vote.

now of course there are those who are racists,and sexist and are most certainly bigots and hateful fuckheads..of course.

and there are those who are diehard rightwing republicans...of course.

but the majority of those who voted trump are NOT those people.the majority of americans have..for forty fucking years..tried to utilize a system to counter correct the political establishment only to get fucked in the ass by the very same system they were trying to correct.

you can go look for yourselves.it looks like a clock pendulum.swinging dem and then back to repub and then back again.

and what did the american people get?
nothing.
nada.
zip.
zilch.

they got:
expanding wars.
stagnant wages and jobs.
higher taxes.
higher living costs.
drone strikes and secret prisons.
a two tiered justice system.
private prisons.
debt peonage.

and a government bought and paid for by:big banks,wall street,military industrial complex and multi-national corporations.

all this while the american middle class fell off the map into poverty and working poor.

so while those who voted trump may be politically unsophisticated,they are most certainly not dumb.

they got it.
and they finally understood that the system that they had been raised to believe was "by the people,for the people" no longer functioned at that capacity.

so the very same people who voted for obama and his "hope and change" campaign.
voted trump.
the people who had become politically engaged by the message that sanders brought to the table,either stayed home,or voted trump.

this was a protest vote.
plain and simple.

your fellow americans just nuked the system.
because it was the SYSTEM that was corrupt and no longer was functioning.

i find their choice just as terrifying as you do,but i have to admire the audacity to just nuke the entire system.

but can you really blame them?
they tried for decades to course correct,but the two party dictatorship had a stranglehold,and they served not 'we the people" but money and power.so our fellow americans utilized their one power given to them by the constitution.

and the hypocrisy here is that when bush was in office the left was losing their shit,and rightly so,but when obama was in office all we heard was crickets....and a disturbing silence from the left.(i realize this is an over generalization.there of course was some noise coming from the left).

and this woman is so out of touch that she is convinced that voting trump was a social issue matter?

i am sorry sweetheart,but some things are just not that simple,and condescending from your ivory tower,prattling on about social constructs as if you have been given some moral authority to judge others,only serves to solidify your own tiny and secluded echo chamber.where everybody can smell their own farts and pat themselves on the back for how clever they are,without ever having to critically examine ones own position.

which just means that she will never..ever..get it.

that is my .02 anyways.
take it for what it is worth.

OMG...I was SOOOO hoping you would make that argument.
The 'blanket' minimum wage is the minimum we have decided that those living in the cheapest places to live should be paid. I agree, it should be based on cost of living...but the $15 an hour standard is what we've said should be the minimum in back woods Appalachia, and in larger cities it should be well over $20. Reduce the pay at the top to a reasonably high level and that won't cost most businesses another penny.

OK, bay area....you said ""those who choose to live there need to consider their income" ....ignoring the majority of people who are 'stuck' there without sufficient income; those who've lost financial stability, or those born there to poor parents who have never made any choice, and usually their parents who no longer have a choice to make at this point. They simply can't afford to move. The same goes for most low income people anywhere, they don't "choose" to live there, they don't have the luxury of a 'choice'. ...or are you lobbying for free moving and relocation services for the poor?

10 years ago, $15 an hour was not a living wage in many places, the bay area for one. I left there 20 years ago, and $15 an hour was pretty hard to live on as a single man sharing an apartment THEN, I can't imagine how it is now, especially for those with children.

No, you didn't say ONLY kids living at home have minimum wage jobs, but you did mention them as if they are a large percentage of minimum wage workers, and the group we should focus on, and implied that wages should be determined (at least in part) by THEIR needs. They are in fact the smallest group of minimum wage workers, and even they need more money to eventually move out.

Really? " those unwilling to put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society." If you really believe a large percentage of people working for minimum wage are "unwilling to put in effort" to better themselves, I just don't know what to say. That's completely batshit insane, they work insanely hard for little compensation, with little respite, and absolutely no respect. Most are putting out more than a reasonable maximum effort just to go deeper into debt constantly, there is no amount of effort that makes more time to make more money to pay for training, or an amount of effort that makes tuition free. Also, who do you think will take over for them if they all put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society"...(whatever the hell that insulting statement is supposed to mean besides implying they aren't decent or serving society today...by choice)?
What are you talking about "Complacency shouldn't be allowed to make life more difficult for all of us"? WHAT?!? OK, yes, so stop being so complacent about the horrendous way we treat those at the bottom of the financial system because that makes life more difficult for all of us by forcing those with 'more' (but not enough 'more' to avoid taxes) to pay higher taxes for welfare, prisons, policing, housing, etc....by making the nation more crime ridden because it's the only way to make a living for so many...by overtaxing our medical system because so many can't afford to be preemptive with their health and only accept medical help when it's at emergency stage...etc.

If the funds to raise the lowest wages don't come from the extravagant pay that goes to the top and are instead being transferred directly to consumers, yes, it's a vicious cycle. That's why you have to ALSO lower top compensation by law, like maybe tie it to the lowest paid worker in the company. That would stop inflation from being a feedback loop with wages.

The government has all kinds of money for shit that does not matter.

When it comes to programs that are really needed (like this) they can't find enough cash and point the finger for higher taxes.

I've read two different explanations for opposing higher taxes. The kinder one is that the creditors realise how bad the Greek economy is and don't want to support measures to make it even worse. Alternatively they just don't believe that raising taxes will get more money (which is probably true).

That said though, since the measures they want to add would also depress the economy, it seems quite ideological.

The less kind explanation is that the creditors are tired of dealing with Tsipras, and are pushing for terms that they know he would be unable to get through parliament so that the deal will fail.

Neither side has really made much effort here, although in fairness to Greece they don't have nearly as much room to move.