I don't think you know what irrelevant means. I think my 5 year old could come up with a more nuanced view of the world than "no! its mine!"
President Bernie Sanders
- Thread starter BLADEMDA
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I don't think you know what irrelevant means. I think my 5 year old could come up with a more nuanced view of the world than "no! its mine!"
D
deleted480308
“It’s mine” doesn’t require nuance. It’s an extremely simple concept. Property rights are not complicated
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blade perseverating about others’ supposed ignorance of history all the while rocking a quote filled with words that Jefferson didn’t say until apparently 1986
19 Famous Thomas Jefferson 'Quotes' That He Actually Never Said At All
www.businessinsider.com
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And no one is arguing for some strawman like total equality. How bout just for things not totally obscene like Buffet paying less in taxes than his secretary, Amazon paying 0 taxes, people in the richest country in the world going bankrupt just cause they got sick, people who work full time but still can’t make ends meet without Medicaid and food stamps? Blade pretends he is for a barebones social safety net but when was the last time he actually voted for someone who is against cutting/privatizing SS, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, TANF, eitc, etc? Easy to wax compassionately but I bet you haven’t put your money where your mouth is in the ballot box.
This is the recent history you should be focused on. Remind me again what happened in 2008?
This is the recent history you should be focused on. Remind me again what happened in 2008?
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How Does Bernie Pay for His Major Plans? | Bernie Sanders Official Website
We are taking on powerful interests who will do and spend whatever it takes to stop us. Change never happens from the top down. Chip in to join the political revolution today.
berniesanders.com
1)”Taxing capital gains at the same rates as income from wages and cracking down on gaming through derivatives, like-kind exchanges, and the zero tax rate on capital gains passed on through bequests.”
There’s no “wealth qualifier” on this. EVERYONE will be subject to the increased capital gains tax.
2)”Enacting corporate tax reform including restoring the top federal corporate income tax rate to 35 percent.”
That’s a great link.
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Why are you just showing top marginal rate? What was their OVERALL tax rate, and what was the tax receipts as a percentage of GDP?
Here's a hint. Tax receipts as % of GDP doesn't change significantly over time no matter what the top marginal rate or bracket is.
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Well, the people who did not receive those drugs denied by the govt might find little solace in that factoid.
I admire your intellect and your passion, I do. We have made our respective points. I cannot be convinced to allow the govt to put a price tag on my life,(NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), the entity in the UK, who in essence determines how much money NHS spends on you, using the metric of Quality Life Years. If it's more than their formula allows, you dont receive the treatment. We have basic disagreements, not without each having merit. I am unwilling to change our system of healthcare and innovation to something of lesser quality IMO and that of many. Continuing to respond point by point clearly wont change either of our minds. Thanks for the thoughtful dialogue!
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deleted480308
Lot of stuff in that post:
1) Buffet doesn’t pay less tax than his secretary, he claims he pays a lower effective rate. Those are very different things.
2) Amazon is a weird one because of all the deductions that exist because our stupid tax laws are so complicated. My biggest complaint here is I think all companies should have lower income tax to approach that zero. You want to eliminate the loopholes and lower rates? i’m on your team
3) living in a rich country shouldn’t have anything to do with a person being responsible for their own bills. My neighbors don’t owe me something just because they have a lot
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From the article that graph is from
Hauser's law - Wikipedia
Daniel J. Mitchell has argued that Hauser's Law has been observed due to the fact that the U.S. does not have a national sales tax and instead collects taxes in a federalist system, in contrast to many other Western nations. He also stated that the U.S. has an inherently more progressive system as well. Thus, he concluded that the Law represents a socio-political policy trend rather than a true economic law and that the trend could change rapidly if value-added taxes are imposed at the federal level.[7]
Economist Mike Kimel has stated that Hauser's Law is misleading as it sweeps large differences under the table. He wrote that tax revenue is higher in the years following a tax increase and lower in the years following a tax cut. He defined the time periods 1951-1953, 1967-1968, and 1991-2001 as "tax hike eras", and 1953-1967, 1969-1991, 2001-2010 as "tax cut eras", and points out that tax revenues increase in "tax hike eras" and that tax cuts lead to lower revenues.[8] It is misleading to refer to 1969-1984 as part of a "tax cut era," however, as the tax cuts of those times were compensating for bracket creep, as the era combined both high inflation with tax brackets not yet indexed for inflation. The tax cuts of that period merely kept taxes in line with inflation, and should not be conflated with later tax cuts which took place on top of a tax code already indexed for inflation.
Zubin Jelveh criticized the Wall Street Journal editorial for failing to adequately separate social insurance taxes from other types of tax revenues (such as income tax and corporate tax revenue). Because social insurance taxes go directly into the Social Security trust fund, revenue that is not earmarked for pension checks has actually declined as a percentage of GDP over the last 50 years. Jelveh points out that the main reason for this decline is a dramatic decline in corporate tax revenues, from more than 5% of GDP to less than 2%. Jelveh uses these facts to critique editorialist David Ranson's use of Hauser's Law to argue that raising tax rates on the rich will be ineffective at raising revenue.[9]
Journalist Jonathan Chait has written that "swings are fairly dramatic" through U.S. history for tax receipts as a percent of GDP. He stated that the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations received "massive" extra revenues as the result of tax increases while the George W. Bush administration tax cuts lead to a "massive" drop in revenues. He labeled the idea of static, flat revenues as a "scam".[10]
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Also notably, taxes as a percentage of GDP are much lower here than most other EU or OECD countries due to lack of VATs and other kinds of taxes.
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It’s all an issue of sustainability, right? They use a system of QALYs to make sure single payer has enough money, and when they didn’t have the money they put in the reforms to get it. Like it or not, we put a price tag on life here too. It’s a sad thing to think about, but when we write a prescription for a $300,000 drug that has minimal efficacy and only prolongs life by 2.6 months, or when we decide to keep multisystem organ failure granny on the vent and CRRT for 3 weeks with no hope of a meaningful recovery, there are economic consequences and other people who could benefit don’t get the care they need. We don’t think about those consequences as much here and that’s how we end up spending almost a double %age of GDP on healthcare as every other country but still have 30 million ppl uninsured.
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Socialism always starts with the best of intentions. Politicians like Bernie have been promising the superiority of Socialism for almost a hundred years. It doesn’t work and won’t work here. What does work is capitalism with a social safety next. All the mainstream democrats are proposing increasing taxes on both the personal and corporate levels. All of them want a better safety net. What they don’t want is Socialism to the Extent of a Bernie Sanders.
As for my personal views I believe in limited government. The less the better imho. Federal govt exists to provide the very basics like the military, infrastructure and judicial system. Most everything else is much better left to the private sector.
So, yes I believe in less taxes, personal liberty and minimal govt programs. The current programs are bloated enough in my opinion. The budget is large enough to the point we are totally broke. What we need in the USA is a system of allocation of resources because unlike Bernie I know money doesn’t grow on trees. My economic world view is the very antithesis of Bernie Sanders
As for the founders and Vector’s understanding of their world view he is clueless. Not a single one would want this much federal oversight and spending. They never imagined a bloated govt giving money to its citizens. That’s not the purpose,as they envisioned it, of the federal govt.
Sanders is as close to a modern day communist as I have ever seen in my lifetime. There has never been a front runner on either side as extreme as Bernie Sanders.
As for my personal views I believe in limited government. The less the better imho. Federal govt exists to provide the very basics like the military, infrastructure and judicial system. Most everything else is much better left to the private sector.
So, yes I believe in less taxes, personal liberty and minimal govt programs. The current programs are bloated enough in my opinion. The budget is large enough to the point we are totally broke. What we need in the USA is a system of allocation of resources because unlike Bernie I know money doesn’t grow on trees. My economic world view is the very antithesis of Bernie Sanders
As for the founders and Vector’s understanding of their world view he is clueless. Not a single one would want this much federal oversight and spending. They never imagined a bloated govt giving money to its citizens. That’s not the purpose,as they envisioned it, of the federal govt.
Sanders is as close to a modern day communist as I have ever seen in my lifetime. There has never been a front runner on either side as extreme as Bernie Sanders.
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deleted500612
This is precisely what's wrong with physicians as a profession and why we will all be the first to have our income slashed to crumbs. We already have the media and politicians pushing the narrative of "doctors are all rich, selfish, indifferent to patient needs and corrupted by big pharma" and now on top of that, instead of advocating for ourselves to receive a fair wage congruent with our training and education we have a widespread phenomenon of fellow physicians stating they don't care if all the other doctors' compensation gets slashed to nothing because they aren't paid very well either. Ever thought about maybe advocating for yourself and your specialty to get compensated more fairly rather than advocating for everyone else to get paid less fairly so they can be brought down to your level and equally as exploited as yourself? SMH
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Lol, ok. I thought you were going to say something totally asinine like "your graph actually proves my point that poorer people pay disproportionately higher rate of taxes".From the article that graph is from
—Hauser's law - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Daniel J. Mitchell has argued that Hauser's Law has been observed due to the fact that the U.S. does not have a national sales tax and instead collects taxes in a federalist system, in contrast to many other Western nations. He also stated that the U.S. has an inherently more progressive system as well. Thus, he concluded that the Law represents a socio-political policy trend rather than a true economic law and that the trend could change rapidly if value-added taxes are imposed at the federal level.[7]
Economist Mike Kimel has stated that Hauser's Law is misleading as it sweeps large differences under the table. He wrote that tax revenue is higher in the years following a tax increase and lower in the years following a tax cut. He defined the time periods 1951-1953, 1967-1968, and 1991-2001 as "tax hike eras", and 1953-1967, 1969-1991, 2001-2010 as "tax cut eras", and points out that tax revenues increase in "tax hike eras" and that tax cuts lead to lower revenues.[8] It is misleading to refer to 1969-1984 as part of a "tax cut era," however, as the tax cuts of those times were compensating for bracket creep, as the era combined both high inflation with tax brackets not yet indexed for inflation. The tax cuts of that period merely kept taxes in line with inflation, and should not be conflated with later tax cuts which took place on top of a tax code already indexed for inflation.
Zubin Jelveh criticized the Wall Street Journal editorial for failing to adequately separate social insurance taxes from other types of tax revenues (such as income tax and corporate tax revenue). Because social insurance taxes go directly into the Social Security trust fund, revenue that is not earmarked for pension checks has actually declined as a percentage of GDP over the last 50 years. Jelveh points out that the main reason for this decline is a dramatic decline in corporate tax revenues, from more than 5% of GDP to less than 2%. Jelveh uses these facts to critique editorialist David Ranson's use of Hauser's Law to argue that raising tax rates on the rich will be ineffective at raising revenue.[9]
Journalist Jonathan Chait has written that "swings are fairly dramatic" through U.S. history for tax receipts as a percent of GDP. He stated that the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations received "massive" extra revenues as the result of tax increases while the George W. Bush administration tax cuts lead to a "massive" drop in revenues. He labeled the idea of static, flat revenues as a "scam".[10]
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Also notably, taxes as a percentage of GDP are much lower here than most other EU or OECD countries due to lack of VATs and other kinds of taxes.
View attachment 296678
Oh, wait. You did. Good job on promptly deleting it.
I am well aware of the criticisms of Hauser's law. I don't disagree with them actually. There are fluctuations in tax receipts, which can be easily identified on his graph. However, my greater prupose was to show that even though there are differences of tax receipts during tax hikes and tax cuts, the differences are not NEARLY as drastic as what was shown on your graph with top marginal rate.
Do I agree that tax hikes generally add a percent or two to tax receipts? Of course.
Do I agree that doubling the top marginal rate will drastically increase receipts? No.
Look at your own graph. In 1950, top marginal rate was 90%. Fed receipts/GDP was approx 18%. In 1990, top marginal was 30% and receipts/GDP was approx 18%
Don't get me wrong. I'm not in the libertarian camp. I'm of the thought that the Bernie style socialism movement will only strengthen from here on out, and there's not a lot any of us can do to stop the tsunami. In 2000, people would have laughed at Bernie's proposals. In 2008, he didn't stand a chance despite gaining mild traction. In 2016, he was close to the nom. In 2020, he will be the dem nod. Following this trend, there's only one logical conclusion.
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Blah blah, sorry. Like I said, no other specialty will give you sympathy for 344% Medicare.
Maybe this is what's wrong with physicians, but what are you going to do about it?
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It’s 344 percent of $80’for a surgical anesthetic. That rate has not kept up with pace of inflation over the past 2 decades. $80. My plumber, electrician and a/c tech all charge more than that amount. All of them get at least the rate of inflation for pay increases.
Medicare doesn’t pay me the 80 percent or even 70 percent of my United Health Care rate like all the other specialties. Medicare takes advantage of forced labor through legislation to make me accept far below the norm.
Most of us could easily live on the compensation of our Canadian counterparts. Medicare pays a fraction of what Canada does to Anesthesiologists.
An example would be primary care getting paid $15 by Medicare for a full physical then getting 344 percent of that $15 for private insurance. I certainly would agree you deserve more than $15 which is what my orderly makes in an hour.
Medicare doesn’t pay me the 80 percent or even 70 percent of my United Health Care rate like all the other specialties. Medicare takes advantage of forced labor through legislation to make me accept far below the norm.
Most of us could easily live on the compensation of our Canadian counterparts. Medicare pays a fraction of what Canada does to Anesthesiologists.
An example would be primary care getting paid $15 by Medicare for a full physical then getting 344 percent of that $15 for private insurance. I certainly would agree you deserve more than $15 which is what my orderly makes in an hour.
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What I wrote is true, genius. The flatter the marginal tax brackets are, the higher the percentage of total tax revenue is being contributed by those with less income, which is regressive and unfair. I deleted it because it’s not really here nor there when talking specifically about whether the total revenue to gdp ratio changes drastically with the top marginal rate.
Another thing. Your take on what “drastically” means is totally subjective. You’re saying a few percent here and there doesn’t matter but somehow we ended up with a $23T national debt even though tax revenue to GDP only varied by a few percent. Trump is going to run a $1T deficit this next year based on the fact that tax revenue is down a couple percent and GDP growth is 2-3% rather than the 4-5-6% which he promised the tax cut would get us. What’s the old saying? A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. People ask how some of these programs are going to be paid for, and it’s not really arguable that creating more income tax brackets on higher earners is going to raise some revenue, but what the graphs you’ve posted don’t fully capture is how revenue would change with significant changes to payroll taxes, capital gains, estate, HFT levies, etc. So ultimately, even if Hausers “law” is true and the revenue to GDP isn’t going to jump by 20% with a marginal bracket increase, it’s mostly just a tautology that doesn’t really provide worthwhile information when creating the totality of tax policy or making a year to year budget.
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The founders would’ve never imagined the vast, vast majority of what the world looks like today, and most of the arguments based on what you think they would’ve wanted are as fabricated as the quote in your signature.
If you really want to talk about socialism and government handouts in America, let’s start here
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Uh, no. You don't actually have enough data to make that assumption. You don't actually know what the breakdown was between the percent of contribution to total tax receipts to household income.
My point is that there were HUGE loopholes which existed during times with high marginal tax rate, and that the marginal rate did NOT correspond to the overall tax rate that the rich were paying.
If you want to close the loopholes, fine. Go ahead. The rich are going to find a way to offshore their money.
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National debt? What? I thought you leftists were all MMTers? You're gonna go Austrian on me all of a sudden?
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deleted941485
MMT is the new Keynesianism. Basically giving them the economic basis to literally expand the state to whatever size they want. They say the only thing that limits them is inflation but my guess is that if inflation gets in the way they’ll just enact price controls anyway.
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What? Flat tax vs progressive tax brackets is basic math. Ignoring how marginal brackets work for a second, say there’s a simplified pool with two taxpayers, A making 100k and B making 1m, you levy a flat 10% tax. Revenue is 110k with 10k from A, 100k from B. Say you create a progressive system where where the rate goes up based on income. 5% from A, 10.5% from B. Revenue is still 110k.
In both examples, B is obviously contributing nominally more, but there is no question that A is contributing much more in the flat system in regard to his own purchasing power parity and cost of living.
Good attempt at deflection, but what I believe about the national debt or deficit spending is unrelated to the point I made that your use of the word “drastically” in regard to a few percent here and there is a bit misleading when talking about numbers in the billions and trillions, and that Hausers “law” is mostly irrelevant when taking into account the totality of tax policy and yearly budgeting. If the rich are finding loopholes and offshoring, the solution isn’t just to throw our hands up and quit, but rather to close loopholes, come up with better enforcement mechanisms and make offshoring financially untenable.
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I agree. Close the loopholes.
However, invoking a time when top marginal tax rate was 90% and saying that's somehow the golden era of equality is misleading.
My point isn't Hauser's law. I don't believe in the idea that there's immutable tax receipt over time. There are 1-2% flux year on year. But, there are more effective ways at increasing tax than simply increasing top marginal tax rate.
In fact, the changes in the few percent of tax receipts/GDP was NOT due to changes in the top marginal rate. We can plot top marginal rate vs tax receipts/GDP and there will be little correlation. This is ultimately what I mean by "drastic" - that the big decrease in top marginal rate from 1950s are unrelated to changes in tax receipt. If anything, tax receipt differences were due to other changes including closing certain loopholes in tax law.
And it is not a deflection, because one's interpretation of macroeconomics is DIRECTLY related to their own perspective on taxation. At the end of the day, what is the purpose of taxation?
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deleted480308
The lower income folks should absolutely start chipping in more to federal income pot as they currently don’t contribute at all
D
deleted480308
I’m with you if you are implying here we should have let those businesses fail if they needed a govt bailout
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Exactly. They argue that they will simply increase taxation to remove excess currency, but that likely won't pan out as they hope.
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Golden era of equality? No, but we also weren’t at record levels of wealth concentration like we are now. Some wealth inequality is unavoidable. Extreme levels of wealth inequality (like where you have San Fran hobos taking dumps on the sidewalk outside of $2m six hundred square foot condos that no one can afford) lead to extreme concentrations of power, extreme political and social turmoil, while simultaneously setting up the economic conditions for major depressions. Also consider for a moment that with Bloomberg in the race, people are still mostly oblivious to the fact that after a long string of typical presidents, we might very well end up with two billionaire oligarchs in a row. That....is not normal, and it’s not ok. @pgg highlighted a salient point awhile back and said it better than I can:
“
I think what people who oppose estate taxes don't understand is that the modern equivalent of royalty is wealth. Money is power, and money in the $billions is power to nudge or even steer a nation's path. We abhor the idea of hereditary rulership, kings passing on sovereign power to firstborn sons.
Most of us who aren't tabloid addicts feel contempt for that sad little spectacle the British royal family is, and marveled at the Queen's role (however superficially ceremonial) in suspending parliament a few months ago.
But when billionaires leave $billions to their kids, it's not just a hardworking bootstrappy chum giving his beloved child a life free of hunger and worry. It's a king bequeathing national-stage-level power and influence to a prince.
Count me in on supporting confiscatory estate taxes on 8-figure inheritances. It's not about raising tax receipts, it's about not having a multigenerational aristocracy with massive political power.”
Ultimately, I agree with you that marginal rates are not the be all end all of progressive tax policy, but there is no doubt that creating more brackets and increasing the rates at the highest brackets will raise more revenue. And, as I said earlier, they are merely part of the total overall tax policy that needs to be addressed when deciding how revenue is raised and where it’s spent.
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Fear mongering around socialism abounds....but yet this is ok...
“A document that the Trump administration sent to Congress, which we have seen, indicates that the administration is transferring $37 million to emergency funding for the coronavirus response from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which funds heating for poor families.”
Forget socialism, how bout not just being a straight up Dickensian villain?
“A document that the Trump administration sent to Congress, which we have seen, indicates that the administration is transferring $37 million to emergency funding for the coronavirus response from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which funds heating for poor families.”
Forget socialism, how bout not just being a straight up Dickensian villain?
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In my view, one of the fundamental differences between repubs and dems is their perspective on the government. Repubs aren't against "helping the less fortunate", we just think the government is incredibly inefficient and wastes tons of money where conversely dems (it seems) think more money to the government is the answer. Examples of waste that come to mind are the Obamacare website that cost $2 billion dollars to get up and running. California spending $50,000 a year per homeless person, on trying to solve homelessness. It's totally insane.
We pay for this.
We pay for this.
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Bernie is a fraud; and a loser. An 80 year old white communist/career politician to lead a revolution against the greatest economy in history just because "orange man bad." You people are smarter than this.
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deleted480308
it's not the govts place to do either, individuals can donate to those causes if they see fit
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And yet amazingly Repubs think the government is very effective and not wasteful at all when they force the taxpayer to give billions of dollars in corporate subsidies to big ag, oil, auto, airlines, healthcare, banks, and wall st. The GOP loves wasteful spending and ballooning deficits too- they just prefer all the money goes towards their special interests.
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Much of the pork on the list is sponsored by republican legislators. How can you argue that Republicans are against government waste?
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This is somewhat disingenuous. I'll cut you some slack since you live out west. It's been a VERY mild rainy winter in the east. I have not plowed my driveway once this winter. New England is way behind on snow. I believe there will be a surplus in that fund this year. Plenty of better reasons to dog the Pres.
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I live in the south. But that’s besides the point. If the fund has a surplus then leave it in the fund for when it is needed. We can do a clean appropriations bill, and even if we had to take money from another program, is heating oil money from poor people the best these corrupt clowns could come up with?
In any case, it looks like the response is currently as disorganized as you would expect from an executive branch that has a million percent turnover and a bunch of incompetent “acting” appointments straight from the swamp
Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response
Lawmakers in both parties on Tuesday expressed growing alarm that the threat of coronavirus in the United States is serious, and that the Trump administration is not doing enough to fight it. …
thehill.com
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So, you bring up what is wrong with our current system (too much govt. interference and favoritism) to defend a position of monumental government interference in our lives without free market forces. Clearly, you failed logic 101 in College.
I would advocate that Crony Capitalism is part of the swamp and why we need less govt. involvement not more. Sure, we need regulations and we need rules but we don't need Trump or Obama picking the winners or losers in our society.
Bernie will just accelerate the picture above by increasing the handouts to those he likes such as clean energy, renewable fuels, teachers union, labor unions, etc all at the expense of the tax payer. But, no need to worry because most of those illustrated in your picture above will be totally destroyed by his socialist policies. They will be either regulated or taxed out of business.
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Agreed. Trump did NOT finish draining the swamp. There is much work to do to DECREASE govt. spending in helping subsidize these industries. This is the exact opposite of what Bernie will do with about 50 trillion more in spending. Bernie will massively increase spending in areas where it will be wasted or squandered because that is what govt. does best.
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It's just PORK and has always been PORK for decades in Washington. Bernie will be bringing a 600 pound hog with him if he gets elected. His list of special interests will receive TRILLIONS of tax payer money. But, that is all fine and dandy if those interests align with LIBERAL philosophy on what is good in this world.
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Good try putting words into my mouth, ace. It’s pretty easy tilting at the strawmen you imagine, but I never said that I oppose government spending targeted at particular groups. I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy where you blather on about government funded social services but never once bring up anything about government funded corporate welfare or the faux free market unless you’re put on the spot.
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I think our government wastes about a trillion dollars per year. That's why I oppose higher taxes. But, i also know I have a commitment to society and an obligation to pay my fair share. So, I accept the tax rates of an Obama or Biden or Bloomberg. I have always opposed the massive govt. spending programs we have now. The last thing we need is another 50 trillion dollars of more govt. intervention.
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Funny. Even though most Libertarians and many Republicans agree that our govt. has always spent taxpayer money on special interests. Why do you think there are so many highly paid lobbyists in washington? Democrats have their pork as well which is why we the taxpayer must foot these deficits for years to come.
Your picture above is clear for everyone to see that my position has never once advocated for cutting social programs to the poorest and neediest among us. But, we could hold the line on spending across the board to a smaller rate increase each year. If each side would cut the fat we could actually balance our budget.
When election time comes around I have to make a choice between the Democrats and Republicans. Both sides spend way too much money and are hypocritical. But, my choice boils down to freedoms like the second amendment, SCOTUS, taxes and the overall welfare of the USA. Yes, I honestly believe Bernie will destroy this nation if given the opportunity. Bernie has called for a "revolution" to our entire economic system. He must be defeated to protect our way of life and preserve this nation for people like FFP who understand the dangers of socialism.
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The actual differences between the GOP and the Democrats are pretty darned small (Bernie is an independent after all).
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By MATTHEW CHOI
02/24/2020 10:31 PM EST
Updated: 02/25/2020 12:06 AM EST
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday doubled down on past remarks about Fidel Castro where he said it was "unfair to simply say everything is bad" about the communist regime in Cuba.
Speaking at a CNN town hall in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday, Sanders said that he has always condemned authoritarianism and ardently believes in democracy. Still, he stood behind remarks he had made during a “60 Minutes“ interview that the communist revolutionary leader, who ruled Cuba from 1959 almost until his death in 2016, dramatically raised literacy rates in his country.
The remarks sparked outrage, particularly among Florida Democrats, who represent a state with a large community of Cuban exiles. State Rep. Javier Fernandez, who is supporting Democratic rival Joe Biden, went so far as to say: “Donald Trump wins Florida if Bernie is our nominee."
“If Bernie Sanders is atop the ticket, it’s going to make it tougher for all of us to win in Florida,” Fernandez said.
Sanders shot back on Monday, declaring: "Truth is truth. All right? If you want to disagree with me, if somebody wants to say that — and by the way all of the Congress people you mentioned just so happen to be supporting other candidates ... but you know, the truth is the truth. And that is what happened on the first years of the Castro regime."
Sanders added that China is another example of an autocratic dictatorship that has accomplished good things for its people.
"China is an authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian," Sanders said. "But can anyone deny, the facts are clear, that they have taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history?"
02/24/2020 10:31 PM EST
Updated: 02/25/2020 12:06 AM EST
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday doubled down on past remarks about Fidel Castro where he said it was "unfair to simply say everything is bad" about the communist regime in Cuba.
Speaking at a CNN town hall in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday, Sanders said that he has always condemned authoritarianism and ardently believes in democracy. Still, he stood behind remarks he had made during a “60 Minutes“ interview that the communist revolutionary leader, who ruled Cuba from 1959 almost until his death in 2016, dramatically raised literacy rates in his country.
The remarks sparked outrage, particularly among Florida Democrats, who represent a state with a large community of Cuban exiles. State Rep. Javier Fernandez, who is supporting Democratic rival Joe Biden, went so far as to say: “Donald Trump wins Florida if Bernie is our nominee."
“If Bernie Sanders is atop the ticket, it’s going to make it tougher for all of us to win in Florida,” Fernandez said.
Sanders shot back on Monday, declaring: "Truth is truth. All right? If you want to disagree with me, if somebody wants to say that — and by the way all of the Congress people you mentioned just so happen to be supporting other candidates ... but you know, the truth is the truth. And that is what happened on the first years of the Castro regime."
Sanders added that China is another example of an autocratic dictatorship that has accomplished good things for its people.
"China is an authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian," Sanders said. "But can anyone deny, the facts are clear, that they have taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history?"
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Read the last sentence in the post above. Then, realize Bernie is a socialist who doesn't understand that it was CAPITALISM which brought the Chinese people out of poverty. When China began to adopt capitalistic principles the economy took off.
China's success is a story of capitalism eradicating poverty
Mastering the fundamental lesson of the past which shows how well free-market capitalism works can help provide a road map to a future marked by greater prosperity and less poverty.
www.washingtonexaminer.com
China's success is a story of capitalism eradicating poverty
Mastering the fundamental lesson of the past which shows how well free-market capitalism works can help provide a road map to a future marked by greater prosperity and less poverty.
China's success is a story of capitalism eradicating poverty
China gave birth to several products that helped change the course of history, such as gunpowder, the compass, and paper money. But its greatest gift to the world has been something different: Setting an example of how capitalist economic policies can help liberate hundreds of millions of people…
www.washingtonexaminer.com
D
deleted480308
In end behavior I agree that the difference is far too small
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Your posts are mostly filled with a bunch of platitudes which have become religion for you rather than nuanced belief. “Government bad, government incompetent, government bloated etc etc” has become a slogan which people think becomes true just because they say it out loud. Is there waste? Sure. But once the overall idea has become some kind of assumed reality, it’s easy for others to come up with similar dumb ideas like taxation is theft or that rates on rich people are too low even though they’re already some of the lowest in the world. Never you mind that the US government is the largest employer employer in the world or that US government programs like SS and Medicare lift 30 million seniors out of poverty.
You can say that conservatives oppose frivolous spending and want fiscal responsibility, but have you taken a look at the deficit recently? How bout under GWB? The last time there was a budget surplus (excluding SS) was under a democratic president. You complain about the swamp, but you’re about to vote for literally the most corrupt, swampiest president the country has ever seen. But I give you credit for at least admitting that your trump vote is based on 2A, SCOTUS, and the fact that you’re also super pumped about saving a couple points on your marginal rate and capital gains.
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Anyone else very struck by the irony that the Deep red states filled with the people who complain the most about wasteful government spending are the same ones who receive most of it?
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Yes I remember the lady in the MAGA hat in 2016 who said on TV that she wanted the government to stay out of her Medicare.
