Out of touch conservative elitist

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWpz9NQipp0[/youtube]

Faux News anchor Stuart Varney is wildly out of touch with America. I mean, this guy's impressed that today's low-income Americans live better than poor Appalachians in the 1930s.

Given that he thinks Appalachian style poverty would be natural and perfectly fitting to a post-industrial society and neglects to realize that various modern technologies are pretty much requisite for involvement in the modern job market, is it any wonder the country club conservatives have such disasterous policies for most Americans?



^ Country club conservative conception of acceptable modern poverty

Honestly, this reminds me of the (True story or urban myth?) that George H. W. Bush was "astonished" when he saw electronic scanners in Supermarkets in 1992.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 30 Jul 2011, 12:05 am, edited 3 times in total.

Stuart Varney actually has a valid point, many people in other countries would think our poor people are living like kings.

I think people on welfare, should at very least have a part time job for instance.

I guess it's quite fitting, then, that Republican/Centrecrat austerity measures that resemble structural adjustment programs the IMF mandated Thirdd World countries implement will give the relative poor of America a taste of what absolute poverty in an unindustrialized, politically dysfunctional nation is. Which, if the country club conservatives have their way, I'm sure America's heading for.

You really are filled with hate against the political right aren't you? I guess you can't stand not to be right.

And that's why America is f*****g AWESOME. Our poor people are not starving in the streets like in some third-world s**thole! You and your kind want to change all that. Why do you hate America?

I suggested I would be more sympathetic if they had part time jobs, though in this economy even that is doubtful at this point.

You have 51% of the country not paying income taxes, that is unsustainable.

Okay, where the hell do you get that figure from?

He is misquoting an almost-accurate figure- 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax (in 2009, at least). Right-wing sources rounded that up to 50% to b***h about how we need to do more to crush the poor, and Inuyasha appears to have arbitrarily decided that it should be rounded up further to "over half."

Of course, they still pay Social Security taxes, sales taxes, etc. I pay social security tax, and I assure you, my income is well below the US median.

And of course, he neglects to mention why the sudden jump in people who pay no income tax. The number was under 40% until the last year of the Bush administration, when the economy tanked. Then Congress passed (and Bush approved) additional tax cuts that ended up exempting some more people from paying tax. Those two factors explain why it is now slightly under 50% who pay no income tax.

I still find this complaint from the right amusing. I thought they hated taxes? I thought tax cuts are always a good idea? Oh no, silly me. Tax cuts are only good when they go to the rich. Tax cuts for the poor and middle class are evil. The poor need to be taxed more, and they to die in the street like dogs.

You never answered me, Inuyahsa. Why do you hate America?

Yeah, in combination with middle/working class tax cut stimulus and the fact that median incomes would fall in a recession as joblessness rises, that explains it. As usual, Far-Right Extremists are unwilling to take cyclical flucations in the economy into account.

I don't hate America, I'm saying people would be more prone to demand the Government spend money responsibly if they had "skin in the game so to speak".

Maybe we should make like the Incas, where everyone was taxed at the same rate - but some paid in llamas, some in wool, some in body lice if they had nothing else to pay with.
I just spent 45 minutes hanging out in the dark on street corner with some very nice boys, about 9 years old, because their mother's ride fell through and they were left at the park waiting for her. Is she taxed as much as I am? Almost certainly not. Should she be? No. If you have to call everyone you know for a ride to pick up your children at the park, the rest of us are better off if you're spending your money on transportation and food for your kids instead of funding wars in Afghanistan.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yghZjv8AI40[/youtube]

Less people are paying income taxes because more people are becoming poor, in case you haven't noticed.

And they are becoming poor because they are no longer employed, which is because of the fact businesses aren't hiring, which is because there is nobody knows what the ground rules is going to be from day to day, and the rules can even be used to penalize you retro-actively.

Let's say 5 years ago you smoked a cigarette, then 5 years later a law is passed banning tobacco products. You end up getting arrested because you smoked 5 years before the law was enacted (but had quit before the law was enacted). It may sound like a ridiculous example, but the basic concepts as to what is going on is the same.

Except that the jump to 49% not paying income tax (in 2008) happened during the Bush administration. So your narrative falls apart.


That's not how the law works in this country.

WTF???????????????

No, you get arrested if you violate the law AFTER it is enacted. It's that simple. Not only does it violate all common sense, it also causes all sorts of legal headaches and the system can't afford all the strain of witch hunting so many people for not having a crystal ball and realizing that what they're doing at the moment may become illegal so they better stop now. Pretty much everyone in the US during Prohibiton would've been arrested if it was true that violating a law before it even becomes enacted is illegal.