Almalieque wrote:
You don't have to buy my argument, it's already sold. The top welfare states are red states. No matter how much you want to spin the facts, nobody is enforcing anyone to take government subsidies, just like Republican governors denied the medicaid expansion. If only poor Democrats were taking government subsidies, we would be spending a whole lot less money on subsidies.
And? That doesn't support the claim that conservatives don't really believe in small government. That's the disconnect I have a problem with. Does it occur to you that maybe those states lean right precisely because they have a higher ratio of welfare recipients to taxpayers and they see that this is more harmful than helpful? Your argument rests on the assumption that the same people who make up the welfare population in a red state are also the same people who make that state a red state. Which is a pretty ridiculous assumption to make.
To be labeled a "red state" simply means that a majority of voters in that state voted Republican in the last election. Unless a majority of the population in a state are on welfare then this doesn't mean there's any statistical intersection at all.
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You're a victim of your own critique. I purposely used the word "assumption" because your claim lacks validity without it. You stated "the only way to win is to convince the people that the other guy holds the same ones." Well, you can't WIN an argument, debate, discussion, etc., unless you are right and you can't be right unless there is a correct answer, i.e. "correct side". All you have done was ignore my point and conjure a fallacious tangent to avoid a proper response.
*cough* I was talking about winning elections (which kinda does have a lot more to do with a position being "popular" versus being objectively "correct"). You're really stretching with the word manipulations here.
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I'm not sure who you (and other conservatives) think you are fooling, but its blatantly obvious that the attack against young people signing up has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the aforesaid group, but everything to do with the fact that Obamacare will implode without them.
I find it telling that you feel the need to label the act of telling people not to throw their money away an "attack" against that group of people.
This is not speculation. Young people who sign up for Obmacare are getting the shaft. That's the whole point. The law needs young healthy people to pay for insurance they don't need, so that they can make it more affordable for all the older sick people. I don't see how cluing those young people into the fact that they're being used is a bad thing to do.
Perhaps if the Dems hadn't written a law which requires ******** over young people and then lying to them about it, maybe we wouldn't be in this dilemma?
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The same way why the "concern" for the website's security is just another way to scare people from signing up.
And yet, both of those things are actually "true". Which means that your "side" more or less relies on people not knowing the truth. Put another way, you have to lie to people to get them to do what you want. Which perhaps should be your first clue that maybe what you're doing isn't such a great idea in the first place.
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Your implication that the Republicans are actively assisting in Obamacare (or any other program that fundamentally opposes the GOP's philosophy) is inane.
Um... No you idiot! I'm talking about how young people paying for insurance they don't need is required to make Obamacare "work". You need them to actively do something to make the health care law work. This is analogous to the car requiring someone to keep fixing it in order for it to keep working. You reversed the analogy though, and decided that me telling someone that they're being used to make something work amounts to "breaking the car".
That's not the truth though. The law only works *if* a whole group of people do something that is harmful/costly to themselves for which they gain no benefit. If I tell them this and they decide not to waste money on insurance that they don't need, and this results in Obamacare being underfunded and failing, this isn't me "breaking the car". It was already broken. I just pointed out to the guy you were relying on fixing it for free that he's being used.
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If the Republicans chose the strategy of "letting program x naturally implode", there wouldn't be much discussion on the matter.
This is obviously not true, or you wouldn't be complaining about Republicans merely informing people of the facts about the law. Unless by "naturally" you mean "a state where people are lied to in order to get them to do something they would not otherwise do", that is. Because "naturally", an informed population will not make the decisions which the law requires them to do in order to meet its cost goals. All we need to do is tell people this truth.
I'll point out again that when your political agenda relies completely on lying to people in order to trick them into doing things that are not in their best interest, maybe you should stop and assess what you're doing.