Negatory

I get what you’re trying to say, but you could say this about almost every president. I bet you didn’t vote for Obama in 2012, but did your life get worse? Doubt you can argue it significantly affected any aspect of your life, but I bet it felt like it did. It’s the same, now. In my mind, our national debt has ballooned, healthcare options for my brothers and sisters that aren’t in the military have gotten more expensive and less available, and I don’t realistically believe that the economy has really gotten better. I enjoy that my 401k has done well, but I don’t enjoy the fact that, when I tried to help my 26 year old nephew (who unfortunately isn’t that smart) find a plan to move out of his parents house, there was no reasonable option other than to take on gig economy jobs and have 2 roommates. You make minimum wage in the majority of the US, your take home pay is on the realm of 1200 dollars a month. Show me how you budget that out in any average CoL area (healthcare+rent+car+food alone exceeds that). He looked into trades, which is probably what he’s going to go with, but that brings his pay to ~$15 an hour, or 1800 dollars a month, but no one would accept him without a personal connection to his family. It’s not as easy as people make it out to be. Finally, told him to join the military, but he’s not medically qualified. The fundamental disagreement I have with you, I think, is that I believe tax rates are probably too low. Mainly at the highest echelons of society, but even at our level. The bottom 50% of society has a horribly hard time due to exponentially increasing rent and education prices, all while wages stagnate. No real income improvement for lower middle class in decades. On top of this, we aren’t anywhere close to balancing budgets, as we are approaching $27T of debt. That comes out to over $200k a taxpayer, and it’s only going up. How are we going to deal with that? *crickets* I believe that this is an example of something that has become markedly worse over the last 4 years. Please look at the marginal tax rates (don’t worry about the article if you don’t want, just the graphs) over the last 70 years, and realize that what you think about “trickle down” or tax rates did not apply during the greatest periods of real economic expansion in the US. Bottom line, taxes MUST go up: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html I encourage you to read about “quantitative easing” and its effect on stock prices. Bottom line, the stock market is inflated, grossly. An additional $3-5T has been added to the money supply of the market (estimated at ~$30T) over the past 4 years by the federal reserve balance sheet. We should have tightened when we had a chance (2016-2019) but the first, and I think only, time that they tried to do that, the DOW dropped slightly. Now you and the rest of America are addicted to seeing the numbers go up, and even with the highest unemployment and lowest wage growth in recent history, we have ATHs in the stock market. And that’s why we’re gonna have $10T on the fed balance sheet. It’s akin to airlines doing stock buybacks then asking for handouts, when we should stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. Global warming is real, and its effects are real. The scientific community has a very strong consensus on this. Current admin: at best, no plans; at worst, open and push for coal and actively make the situation worse. We have to invest in future technology. And that’s gonna cost money. These posts are useless, because you’ll find one thing that you disagree with and then entirely disregard the rest, but a lot of people aren’t voting against trump just cause “Orange man bad.” And, I will say, Biden is a terrible choice. But he’s still better.

They’ve been saying this about the next generation since the beginning of time. “Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.“ - Socrates

You’re saying that the president can say things that are anywhere from misleading to entirely incorrect then hand wave it as sarcasm or trolling? A large portion of the world typically listens to the US president as a source of credible information. Expecting all of society at all levels of intelligence to understand the presidents unclear rhetoric is inane. I don’t know how you can’t believe that lying about things can’t affect public opinion and following public policy. On the positive side, for you, when the president says things like he “deserves” a third term, you can say he was jk lol 😂 Trollin Da libs, and just not address anything you don’t feel like addressing. It turns most arguments into “you just didn’t understand what he meant.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1256366878873792512 https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392?s=20 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.10tv.com/amp/article/news/nation-world/trump-november-election/507-ae05a9c5-99e0-48f1-b4d6-5da1e500ce10 The administration is basically setting up the ability to claim “fake news,” no matter what, when they lose. Which is good, because then they can get the eight more years he’s been floating. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-third-term-because-they-spied-on-him-1045743/amp/ If Obama said this stuff, it probably would’ve been cool, right?

Appreciate the actual responses. I disagree with some points, obviously, but at least we are talking about policy now. Ill respond later.

Balance to the federal reserves balance sheet, does that make it more clear? Expected to hit upwards of $10T this year. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm

Predictable

Agree wholeheartedly, but how do you quantify that? Most economic reports, when it comes to journalism, over the last few years have been that stock market going up = free market working well, when that's not necessarily true.

The S&P 500 is also nearly at all time highs, so i don’t get your point about the DJIA. Almost every index you look at domestically is doing well. With enough quantitative easing (expected to be up to $5T dollars this year, already at 2-3), you can prop up anything. Our balance sheet at the end of the year could be over $10T. YGBSM. Obama did it. Trump is doing it. But, the truth is, right now, we are in no place to do that. Our interest rates are almost 0. And most of that is due to not taking the chance to tighten when the economy was actually “doing well. There has been no meaningful QT at any point where it would have worked. Its analogous to the airlines doing massive stock buybacks to inflate their prices. You can’t take on debt forever to make it look like the economy is doing well. And, worse, QE disproportionately benefits stockholders over the rest of society. More meaningful improvement would be increasing median family wages adjusted for purchasing power. Something that no one has done in 40 years.

Highest unemployment rate in recent history and stock prices are hitting records. Not a great indicator.

Was with you til this. The DJIA only reflects a small minority of the economy and doesn’t relate to how the majority of people are actually doing.

Repeating, of course.

Discuss. Rabble rabble constitution rabble rabble. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1288818160389558273?s=20

That’s one way to look at it. I’m sure both sides see it that way to a large extent. I’m sure it’s been that way for many many elections. It’s one of the large problems with the two party “lesser of two evils” election system we have. Now you don’t have to backup what policies you stand for - you can just say what you don’t want and hope it turns out okay.

Japan is a valid example and a valid post, but I believe that it's pointless to debate you any longer. There are clear cut counterexamples to your poorly written first point. We're not engaging in academic thought anymore if you refuse to acknowledge that. And to your point that "Who gets to decide? The government. It ain’t free bubba." - The United States of America has had plenty of cases where freedom of speech wasn't just a clearcut happyland world that you make it out to be. Who gets to decide in the end? Oh, the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_the_First_Amendment I'm done playing 6 dimensional chess inside of your brain.

Also, I'm not the one with burden of proof. All of this conversation has been in response to an outlandish claim by a member of this forum when he said "An entitlement only afforded to you in the US. Free speech isn’t legal anywhere else in the world." The greatest thing about a positive claim is that, to disprove it, you only need one example as a counterpoint. And since semantics arguments are accepted here (apparently) and you made an extremely over-extended claim that the entitlement to free speech is literally ONLY afforded to you in the US and only legal in the US, I present one counterpoint (enjoy): "The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 5: Freedom of expression. (1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources." This example both proves that the US is not the only place in the world where freedom of speech is afforded to you, and, furthermore, shows that free speech is legal somewhere else in the world. Boom, both parts of your argument are done, gottem. This way of arguing is f#$@ing stupid. Try to understand my point and not pick apart my words. I'll do the same for you. I understand, for example, that your point was that America's level of freedom of speech is unparalleled. I agree that, when it comes to strict censoring, you're correct. You can say more here in America than probably anywhere else in the world. But when it comes to talking about most things in common discourse/debate (politics, viewpoints, government criticism), you get the same protections across many first world countries.

It's not blame shifting, @Guardian, it's pointing out double-standards. Don't misconstrue the argument.

Mark it off for the technicality here, congrats. Even though no one in this thread would argue with the fact that in an actual fire, no shit, you can say there is a fire. Guardian even said this is "the only place in the world where it is legal to speak your mind and as long as you aren’t yelling fire in a crowded movie theater," which is totally 100% technically incorrect by your logic, although I'm pretty sure you understood his point. The point is that that America's freedom of speech is almost indistinguishable from many other nations'.

I agree, everyone should not have equality of outcome, they should have equality of opportunity. All men are created equal. Which is why I’m certain you support a 100% redistributed inheritance and death tax, right? (I’m actually sure you don’t, and I’ve never understood this stance).

I think we’re gonna have to agree to disagree on many points, thanks for the opinions.

Am I in a never ending semantics argument? Is this about can vs may? The courts ruled your first amendment rights don’t apply when there is a “clear and present danger.” “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

Also, I'll give it to you that you never said explicitly that what I said was only allowable in America. Although I still don't understand why you pointed it out other than to implicitly hint that I wouldn't be able to share my viewpoint unless I was here. Because in reality, what I said was perfectly allowable in the vast majority of countries, which is why your comment was so out of place and received multiple "why you saying this?" responses from not just myself.

And talking condescendingly to someone about how they should read books and take classes to learn how to focus their thoughts is a typical strategy to belittle and ignore someone's points (an ad hominem attack) when you aren't hitting the substantive parts of the argument. You are now just attacking me, not my argument. Focus.

Other countries have freedom of speech. Your argument is that America has the only real freedom of speech because other countries prohibit some things like hate speech. Well, as you said, you can't say fire in a crowded movie theater, so I guess by your logic, no one has true freedom of speech. Focus.