Omnibus GOP Primary ThreadFollow

Pile on the gay jokes

Sorta.

There's a difference between optimal usage of collective goods and the discussion for whether they should be collective.

Yeah, most people have a difficult time planning for medical expenses (economically), since they're not a regular occurrence for a person, Government is better at planning, since for it, they are.

People also can't come to the conclusion that they are ****** at planning, since it's an admission of being dumb, which no proud person would do.

It's the same reason we have the Accredited investor laws.

Although it'd be tough to generate a syllogism without wrecking your tax base.

Texas, which is caught in some huge redistricting mess, is pushing its primary back to late May. Texas holds about 30% of the GOP pledged delegates (versus the ones "awarded" via caucuses) so this could easily drag the primary out unless one candidate takes a commanding lead.

My afternoon drive-time radio host is becoming convinced that the GOP is deliberately throwing the election because they get more contributions and conservative media gets a wider audience when they have a Democrat in office to ***** about.

No, I don't believe it's true and don't believe he's saying it in any manner aside from tongue-in-cheek.

Except that's not what the article actually says. Well, it says it, but the conservative they highlight don't:




The consistent theme of those conservatives they interviewed is that it would be hard to make due with less, but that we should not raise taxes. The crying and whatnot is the problem though. It shows why it's so dangerous to extend those benefits too broadly in the first place. This is something I've talked about a lot (and even just recently). What the left has been doing over the last 40 years or so is not increasing benefits for poor people, but expanding the scope of the benefits so that they apply to more and more people (many of whom are not poor). Of course, once you give someone a benefit, they will be used to it and giving it up will be hard.

A whole article dedicated to showing just how hard that is doesn't disprove the broader argument that we should do it, and frankly should have avoided getting ourselves into that situation in the first place. It ties into my argument earlier this week (and last week) about the danger of increasing the percentage of the population which gets more directly back from the government than the spend. This is *why* you shouldn't do that. It puts those people in an incredibly difficult position and automatically skews their decisions.

Yup. Which is why the EIC is a terrible terrible tax policy in the first place. It's basically a "you make less than X, you get Y money free" thing. And as the article points out, its purpose is to reduce the burden of payroll taxes on low income folks (which is a dubious objective to begin with), but along the way it makes people well above the poverty line dependent on it. Political vote buying has driven this expansion far more than actual need.

Exactly, it's like a smaller version of the home mortgage interest deduction. Politically motivated and creates a dependent subclass of welfare recipients who can't afford to buy a hours without it.

You know what I'm saying, huh?

Yeah we lost our EIC this year. My husband whined at me about it, and I asked him if he'd like me to quit my job and the paltry $18K extra a year it brings in so he can get his extra $1500 back in taxes.

For us, though, the insurance benefit of getting married was worth a lot more than the EIC. So if two young people are both working and getting health insurance through their jobs, then yes, they'll benefit more by staying unmarried and each getting the EIC.

However, a lot of couples are lopsided like we are, where one person works full time with benefits and the other one works part time without them because of school, in which case it's way better to be married with proper health insurance than merely cohabitating without.

Again, fine cognitive dissonance, there, Lou.

Except that one is a deduction, which incentivizes/rewards people for doing something with money they've earned that is beneficial to their long term economic outlook

Paying interest? Sorry, no, it's welfare, pure and simple. I mean, don't get me wrong, being able to write off a portion of the interest on my $700,000 loan for my summer home clearly has a much greater benefit to society than giving working families more money to raise their children.

The poors probably just buy more Ripple with it anyway, right? Or whatever those people do. My interest payments keep Chase a going concern!

Yeah. Because it's just about paying interest. WTF?

How about "buying a home"? By making the interest deductible, it helps provide an incentive to buying a home. Or at the very least, offsets the cost difference a bit when compared to say, renting.



Because no working families ever buy a home? I know that you envision a world in which everyone is either rich and doesn't need any deductions at all, or poor and unable to afford any of the financial actions which might qualify for them, but the reality is that a hell of a lot of people live well in between those extremes and something like the mortgage interest deduction can make a significant difference for them by allowing them to buy a home, which creates wealth for themselves and their children while still being able to afford to feed and clothe their children.


But you don't want those pesky working class folks to ever accumulate wealth, do you? How can you control them if you allow them to actually own things? Heaven forbid if their children actually start their own businesses or something. That would be a calamity!!!

Edited, Feb 16th 2012 7:44pm by gbaji

On topic, Santorum's first visiting in Georgia is the unfortunately named city of Cumming.

That will help his google search-ability.