53% of Americans Think Republicans are Too Extreme

[daveman]

53% of Americans Think Republicans are Too Extreme

Is the current position of Republican/Tea Party members of the House to allow the entire nation to go over the "fiscal cliff" rather than increase taxes for the wealthiest 1% going to change this perception?

There is a movement afoot by the GOP to simply allow the democrats to have what they want by voting "present".
This way the democrats will have to own whatever happens.

They wouldn't, of course. The Democrats don't do personal responsibility.

 

[Cammmpbell]

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/12/20/rel18c-1.pdf

Wide sampling error though.

On any given day I don't give a phiddler's phuck but at least enough turned out Nov.6th who felt that way.

 

[thereisnospoon]

I thought we benefitted from keeping the money we are paid for working.

There are lots of ways that the quality of life in a society benefits from investments in our communities, schools, and infrastructure.

Taxation is NOT an investment.
The private sector can do everything the government can do. And do it better and less expensively.
Only the undying need to create government employment stands in the way of the private sector.

 

[thereisnospoon]

All that matters is what "I" have, yet everything around me is in decay. But quality of life is more than about just what "I" have, it's about the quality of what is around me and what others are experiencing too. Gordon Gekko didn't appear to care about that, he was just an angry, cynical, lonely island. Apparently there are Gordon Gekkos in real life as well, huh?

I read an interesting comment sometime in the 90's which really stuck with me and as time has passed, I have realized the great truth it contained. I wish I could remember who said it because he clearly possessed great wisdom and foresight. He said that American business leaders had made a grave mistake in adopting the Harvard MBA business school model for executives. This model valued stock prices and profits as the sole criteria upon which the success or failure of a business rests. Very much the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" mantra.

This model has been in effect now for 30 years. It has lead to companies outsourcing American jobs because that increases profits, in the short run. It has lead to vulture capitalism which destroys companies and kills jobs because the land, intellectual property and equipment is worth more than the company as a whole.

The bottom line doesn't value the employees, the contribution to the community, the impact on the overall economy of a viable company. It only values stock prices and profits and higher is always better, even if it is higher in the short term.

The working poor and lower middle class have now had their wages surpressed and their purchasing power eroded to the point that they are no longer able to purchase the consumer goods and services which fuel the consumer economy and as a result, we have a recession that is slow to end.

As long as we push stock prices and profits as the only criteria by which to judge companies, mega-corporations which use government programs such as Medicaid, social security and food stamps to supress their wages and subsidize their profits, will be seen as stars of the Fortune 500 and not as the destructive parasites they really are.

Notwithstanding your view of the "Harvard MBA Business School model", you do realize that successful companies attract investors which drives the price of the stock which allows the business to grow and thus the need for more employees, yes? Those who hold stock in a company from the people in the board room to the worker with a 401k to the person who's pension fund is invested in said company are THE OWNERS of said company. Did you think that for example Citigroup's 350,000 employees just popped up from thin air?
You stated this person claimed that wages of the "working poor and lower middle classes have been suppressed"...How so?
Like it or not, labor is a commodity. Skill level and education determine wages.
A worker who does nothing to improve his or her skill set or further their education suppresses their own wages.
You can whine all day long about wages and consumerism. The bottom line is government stands in the way of business, which is part of the reason unemployment remains high and GDP growth as a crawl. With Obama's reelection and all sorts of new taxes and regulations on business and investment in the hopper, expect this trend to continue. The near term economic outlook for the next 18-24 months is for slow growth in the GDP( under 2%). More businesses will be laying off workers than those willing to hire.

 

[Old Rocks]

I thought we benefitted from keeping the money we are paid for working.

There are lots of ways that the quality of life in a society benefits from investments in our communities, schools, and infrastructure.

Taxation is NOT an investment.
The private sector can do everything the government can do. And do it better and less expensively.
Only the undying need to create government employment stands in the way of the private sector.

Damn. What a totally dumb fuck. The private sector gave us the First Great Republican Depression, and damned near gave us the Second Great Republican Depression.

Our government of "We, the People" has done many great things very well. The Corps of Discorvery. World War 2. Transcontinental railroad. Social Security. Homestead Act. Apolla Program. CCC's. WPA. And so many other things.

While people like you have done nothing at all but whine.

 

[daveman]

There are lots of ways that the quality of life in a society benefits from investments in our communities, schools, and infrastructure.

Taxation is NOT an investment.
The private sector can do everything the government can do. And do it better and less expensively.
Only the undying need to create government employment stands in the way of the private sector.

Damn. What a totally dumb fuck. The private sector gave us the First Great Republican Depression, and damned near gave us the Second Great Republican Depression.

Our government of "We, the People" has done many great things very well. The Corps of Discorvery. World War 2. Transcontinental railroad. Social Security. Homestead Act. Apolla Program. CCC's. WPA. And so many other things.

While people like you have done nothing at all but whine.

Spoon, forget it. Roxy thinks Solyndra flushing a half-billion tax dollars down the toilet was a successful investment.

 

[Dragonlady]

Notwithstanding your view of the "Harvard MBA Business School model", you do realize that successful companies attract investors which drives the price of the stock which allows the business to grow and thus the need for more employees, yes?

Silly me, I thought that companies grew because they sold goods and services to their customers, and expanded their customer base, then using profits and investments, expanded as their sales expanded. It matters little how many investors a company has if it doesn't have any customers.

This is where outsourcing labour and putting people out of work has really backfired. When enough jobs are lost and wages on the remaining low income jobs lose 29% of their purchasing power, people can no longer afford to buy stuff so these companies aren't selling their products. Yes, companies can manufacture for less, but if there are no buyers, they still have a problem.

Just because a company can manufacture in a country with little or no environmental or health and safety regulations, doesn't mean that it should. There should be other considerations aside from profits.

I'm not opposed to companies making money. I'm opposed to companies making record profits while using government subidies to compensate their employees, or while destroying the environment anywhere in the world. I want corporations to be good citizens, as well as profitable.

Did you think that for example Citigroup's 350,000 employees just popped up from thin air?

I think that the original Citigroup managers set up a very good, well run company that offered competitive financial services to its customers, and that the company's original employees did a very good job of selling those services to its customers so that they came back and recommended Citigroup to their family and friends. As the customer base expanded and more customers signed up, the company started expanding its services and its branches.

Eventually the company sought investors and the company's employees continued to work hard and provide excellent service to all of the customers so the business could continue to grow. Investors do nothing for a company's profitability. That's on the back of the managers and the front line workers because those are the people the public is dealing with.

You stated this person claimed that wages of the "working poor and lower middle classes have been suppressed"...How so?

Walmart keeps their workers to part times hours - less than 30 hours a week. In this way, the workers don't qualify for company benefits. Since they pay minimum wage, they have HR staff who help their employees apply for food stamps and Medicaid, and make sure the employees hours are such that they qualify for these entitlements. This keeps their wage costs among the lowest in the retail industry but every Walmart store in the US costs taxpayers over $400,000 in entitlement payments.

Because Walmart is the largest retailer in the US, other big box retailers must adopt similar practices with their employees in order to keep their prices competitive with Walmart, so wages in the entire big-box sector are being surpressed.

Like it or not, labor is a commodity. Skill level and education determine wages. A worker who does nothing to improve his or her skill set or further their education suppresses their own wages. .

Yes, labour is a commodity and as such it's value depends more on supply and demand than anything else. The US has a large supply of unskilled, undocumented workers who will work for less than minimum wage and this keeps the costs for unskilled labour so low, it barely pays to take the jobs. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing as many processes are taken over by robots, or the jobs are outsourced to third world countries to cut production costs.

When construction grinds to a halt, architects, engineers, heavy equipment operators, carpenters and ditch diggers are all thrown out of work. Various levels of education, different skill sets, but when no one is building, they're all out of work.

Medical schools carefully control the number of students they take in to avoid producing so many doctors that they flood the market and drive down prices. In Canada, the government has asked medical schools to increase enrolment to help deal with a shortage of primary care physicians.

Skill and education have little to do with wages. Some sectors pay high wages because of risk or difficulty. Some because of isolation. Teachers make less than doctors, lawyers or accountants, although both have the level of educational requirements. Social workers, teachers, and other public sector workers make less than private sector employees, or at least they used to.

The bottom line is government stands in the way of business, which is part of the reason unemployment remains high and GDP growth as a crawl.

This is such a neo-con fiction. If you truly believe this, you have no clue as to how the economy really works. If this really were true, large multi-national companies would all be moving to those countries where there is little or no government. In fact, just the opposite is true. The worlds' largest and most profitable corporations don't exist in countries with no governments. Mega-corporations ONLY exist in countries with very large governments, and many of these companies exist in countries with far more regulations and higher taxes than the US.

With Obama's reelection and all sorts of new taxes and regulations on business and investment in the hopper, expect this trend to continue. The near term economic outlook for the next 18-24 months is for slow growth in the GDP( under 2%). More businesses will be laying off workers than those willing to hire.

I'm a gambling woman. I'll bet that once a deal is reached on the fiscal cliff, the economy will settle in nicely, and confidence will improve. Since there's no major changes in economic policy, the growth should be better than anticipated.

 

[Mac1958]

I'm a gambling woman. I'll bet that once a deal is reached on the fiscal cliff, the economy will settle in nicely, and confidence will improve. Since there's no major changes in economic policy, the growth should be better than anticipated.

Yeah, we'll see. The market's taken a beating over the last few days, and it hasn't been because the economic data has been poor. It's been because of the fact that our "leaders" (cough) in DC have been unable to reach an agreement. You may very well be right about a rebound IF a deal is reached, here's hoping.

Back to the Gordon Gekko thing: The back-and-forth above about the way businesses grow notwithstanding -- I'm a financial advisor and neck-deep in that stuff -- my point was more philosophical. You're right, since the 80's (and that movie, not coincidentally) the Gordon Gekko model has remained in effect, where there has been an assumption that the more "I" have, the better it is for everyone. Lower income taxes, higher income taxes, it doesn't matter - we celebrate those who show off their gaudy possessions and ignore those who simply don't have the capacity to function anywhere near that level in a free market economy.

So how's that working out for us? Do I really need to answer that one?

The Gordon Gekko-ites will defend such narcissistic and self-centered behavior all day, because they're essentially programmed to. "It's not my problem" is the mantra, even as they watch the decay around them intensify.

I believe the phrase "ugly American" originated with regards to our behavior while visiting Europe and other foreign countries. But I think our complete disregard for humility and modesty right here at home makes the phrase appropriate for many, as well.

Come to think of it, we could use far less Gordon Gekko and far more Jerry McGuire.

.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

I would say that 53%+ of Americans are too detached to recognize what an extreme position is. In fact they are so uninformed that they will believe whatever is fed to them on the nightly news.

 

[RandallFlagg]

I would say that 53%+ of Americans are too detached to recognize what an extreme position is. In fact they are so uninformed that they will believe whatever is fed to them on the nightly news.

Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more. Whether it be the communists on MSNBC or the NeoCons on FOX news, Americans have boiled politics down to nothing more than a reality show with the media being the hosts that keeps the "crap" stirred up.

Back in the day, with Huntley, Brinkley or even "Uncle Walt", we rarely got their personal views. Most people were surprised to find out that Cronkite was a crazed liberal. To the best of my knowledge, he never let it slip till nearly the end of his career on CBS.

Now, as with Hollywood idiots (excuse me, celebrities) and teenage music "stars", the American public hangs on every word that moronic fools spout like Maddow, Matthews, Hannity and O'Reilly. Some 7 million people tune in each night to get their "opinions" from Hannity and O'Reilly and admittedly, nowhere near as many tune into MSNBC to watch those fools puke out their hatred of this country.

I fully expect that in the near future to see a cable news show hosted by Honey Boo Boo; that's where this country is, unfortunately.

 

[Euroconservativ]

People also believe that 1 in 4 are gay:

U.S. Adults Estimate That 25% of Americans Are Gay or Lesbian

Polls have become a political weapon

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

People also believe that 1 in 4 are gay:

U.S. Adults Estimate That 25% of Americans Are Gay or Lesbian

Polls have become a political weapon

I'd say more like 2%

 

[RandallFlagg]

People also believe that 1 in 4 are gay:

U.S. Adults Estimate That 25% of Americans Are Gay or Lesbian

Polls have become a political weapon

I'd say more like 2%

Agreed. However, when you apply the media's obsession with "inclusion" in seemingly all aspects of television and cinema, is it any wonder that "mainstream straight America" has come to believe that the gay lifestyle is more prevelant than it is in reality? Remember, to Hollywood, perception IS reality.

 

[Dragonlady]

Agreed. However, when you apply the media's obsession with "inclusion" in seemingly all aspects of television and cinema, is it any wonder that "mainstream straight America" has come to believe that the gay lifestyle is more prevelant than it is in reality? Remember, to Hollywood, perception IS reality.

I don't think that the media is obsessed with inclusion so much as they now have something new they can add to the story mix - openly gay characters and stories, which have previously not been available, or had been only hinted at.

Even with this level of inclusion, the number of gay characters and story lines is nowhere close to 25%. Usually it's one character in an ensemble cast.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Agreed. However, when you apply the media's obsession with "inclusion" in seemingly all aspects of television and cinema, is it any wonder that "mainstream straight America" has come to believe that the gay lifestyle is more prevelant than it is in reality? Remember, to Hollywood, perception IS reality.

I don't think that the media is obsessed with inclusion so much as they now have something new they can add to the story mix - openly gay characters and stories, which have previously not been available, or had been only hinted at.

Even with this level of inclusion, the number of gay characters and story lines is nowhere close to 25%. Usually it's one character in an ensemble cast.

You must not watch much hgtv or diy. My ex watches those all the time and its wall to wall fags. I like the premise to a lot of the shows but I find it hard to deal with the sissy men who either host them or star in them. I mean who knew every reality agent or house flipper was queer?

 

[Dragonlady]

You must not watch much hgtv or diy. My ex watches those all the time and its wall to wall fags. I like the premise to a lot of the shows but I find it hard to deal with the sissy men who either host them or star in them. I mean who knew every reality agent or house flipper was queer?

No, I don't watch much DIY or HGTV. I'm married to a carpenter and it's like watching work to him. I like sports and movies and right now is figure skating season, my favourite sport. It ties in perfectly with my other favourite sport - baseball. Go Jays!

 

[thereisnospoon]

Notwithstanding your view of the "Harvard MBA Business School model", you do realize that successful companies attract investors which drives the price of the stock which allows the business to grow and thus the need for more employees, yes?

Silly me, I thought that companies grew because they sold goods and services to their customers, and expanded their customer base, then using profits and investments, expanded as their sales expanded. It matters little how many investors a company has if it doesn't have any customers.

This is where outsourcing labour and putting people out of work has really backfired. When enough jobs are lost and wages on the remaining low income jobs lose 29% of their purchasing power, people can no longer afford to buy stuff so these companies aren't selling their products. Yes, companies can manufacture for less, but if there are no buyers, they still have a problem.

Just because a company can manufacture in a country with little or no environmental or health and safety regulations, doesn't mean that it should. There should be other considerations aside from profits.

I'm not opposed to companies making money. I'm opposed to companies making record profits while using government subidies to compensate their employees, or while destroying the environment anywhere in the world. I want corporations to be good citizens, as well as profitable.

Did you think that for example Citigroup's 350,000 employees just popped up from thin air?

I think that the original Citigroup managers set up a very good, well run company that offered competitive financial services to its customers, and that the company's original employees did a very good job of selling those services to its customers so that they came back and recommended Citigroup to their family and friends. As the customer base expanded and more customers signed up, the company started expanding its services and its branches.

Eventually the company sought investors and the company's employees continued to work hard and provide excellent service to all of the customers so the business could continue to grow. Investors do nothing for a company's profitability. That's on the back of the managers and the front line workers because those are the people the public is dealing with.



Walmart keeps their workers to part times hours - less than 30 hours a week. In this way, the workers don't qualify for company benefits. Since they pay minimum wage, they have HR staff who help their employees apply for food stamps and Medicaid, and make sure the employees hours are such that they qualify for these entitlements. This keeps their wage costs among the lowest in the retail industry but every Walmart store in the US costs taxpayers over $400,000 in entitlement payments.

Because Walmart is the largest retailer in the US, other big box retailers must adopt similar practices with their employees in order to keep their prices competitive with Walmart, so wages in the entire big-box sector are being surpressed.



Yes, labour is a commodity and as such it's value depends more on supply and demand than anything else. The US has a large supply of unskilled, undocumented workers who will work for less than minimum wage and this keeps the costs for unskilled labour so low, it barely pays to take the jobs. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing as many processes are taken over by robots, or the jobs are outsourced to third world countries to cut production costs.

When construction grinds to a halt, architects, engineers, heavy equipment operators, carpenters and ditch diggers are all thrown out of work. Various levels of education, different skill sets, but when no one is building, they're all out of work.

Medical schools carefully control the number of students they take in to avoid producing so many doctors that they flood the market and drive down prices. In Canada, the government has asked medical schools to increase enrolment to help deal with a shortage of primary care physicians.

Skill and education have little to do with wages. Some sectors pay high wages because of risk or difficulty. Some because of isolation. Teachers make less than doctors, lawyers or accountants, although both have the level of educational requirements. Social workers, teachers, and other public sector workers make less than private sector employees, or at least they used to.

The bottom line is government stands in the way of business, which is part of the reason unemployment remains high and GDP growth as a crawl.

This is such a neo-con fiction. If you truly believe this, you have no clue as to how the economy really works. If this really were true, large multi-national companies would all be moving to those countries where there is little or no government. In fact, just the opposite is true. The worlds' largest and most profitable corporations don't exist in countries with no governments. Mega-corporations ONLY exist in countries with very large governments, and many of these companies exist in countries with far more regulations and higher taxes than the US.

With Obama's reelection and all sorts of new taxes and regulations on business and investment in the hopper, expect this trend to continue. The near term economic outlook for the next 18-24 months is for slow growth in the GDP( under 2%). More businesses will be laying off workers than those willing to hire.

I'm a gambling woman. I'll bet that once a deal is reached on the fiscal cliff, the economy will settle in nicely, and confidence will improve. Since there's no major changes in economic policy, the growth should be better than anticipated.

Hey lookie here. NO retailer offers full time work to non management employees.
So what if these companies do not offer full time hours. That is their right.
And please ,stop arguing the wages = consumer mantra. It isn't true. If it were, the stores would be empty. Investment is the primary focus of any publicly held company. Consumerism is secondary. The reason is quite simple. Investment allows a business to pay it's bill and to grow. The purchase of products or services is slow money that comes in on the back end. In other words a business can sell whatever it provides all it likes, but if there is no capital to run the business, there is no business.

This is quite amusing:
"This is where outsourcing labour and putting people out of work has really backfired. When enough jobs are lost and wages on the remaining low income jobs lose 29% of their purchasing power, people can no longer afford to buy stuff so these companies aren't selling their products. Yes, companies can manufacture for less, but if there are no buyers, they still have a problem."
First, define "outsourcing"...
What do you mean by "putting people out of work"?
So contrary to what the Obama admin has been telling us, the middle class is NOT growing?

You're a gambling woman? Please stop doing that. Based on your "government is my God" rant, you are sure to lose your money betting on a government that cannot do one single thing within the confines of a budget or a time line.

I appreciate your optimism. However, no matter how you slice it, placing additional tax burden on the job creators and the investor class helps no one. Not even the government.
While you may try to convince other that increasing taxes is a good thing, you know damned well the money generated by the new tax rates will not matter a hill of beans.
These tax hikes are purely symbolic and here is an example. When Obama was informed the then new and lower capital gains rate of 15% resulted in MORE revenue to the federal government, Obama rejected that fact and said he just didn't think that was fair.
Now, we see how Obama really thinks. He's not in it for the good of the nation as a whole. He is in it for how things appear to his voting base.
Go place your chips on the federal government. You'll lose. Government cannot and does not produce prosperity. It only consumes.

 

[thereisnospoon]

There is a movement afoot by the GOP to simply allow the democrats to have what they want by voting "present".

This way the democrats will have to own whatever happens.

The Democrats are fully prepared to own what happens. Boehner is not prepared to own anything because his own party will excoriate him if he does. Everything the Democrats did before 2010 slowed the recession and started the country back on track.

It took two years to halt the total freefall the economy was in when Obama took office and then the Republicans took over the House and everything stalled because they refused to pass any legislation Obama proposed, all in an effort to limit him to one term. Any bill that made it past the House, was fillibustered in the Senate. The recovery slowed but continued and the voters of the US came to see that the Republicans were prepared to let the whole country go to hell in a handbasket rather the let this President have any sort of achievements to run on.

I'm still chuckling over the Republicans fillibustering their own bill to allow Obama to control the debt ceiling because Mitch McConnell thought he had enough Democratic support to get a simple majority defeat for it. When all of the Democratic Senators voted in favour of the bill and it passed, McConnell was arguing that his own bill was far too important an issue to be decided by a simple majority. Priceless.

You just can't make this shit up.

It is outside the purview and the authority of the Executive Branch to have such power. Our system of Checks and Balances is designed such that no branch of government is more powerful than the others.
The Founders set our government to PREVENT is from doing "too much".
I just noticed your location. Canada? Umm you don't have a say. Mind your own fucking business.

 

[thereisnospoon]

There is a movement afoot by the GOP to simply allow the democrats to have what they want by voting "present".

This way the democrats will have to own whatever happens.

The Democrats are fully prepared to own what happens. Boehner is not prepared to own anything because his own party will excoriate him if he does. Everything the Democrats did before 2010 slowed the recession and started the country back on track.

It took two years to halt the total freefall the economy was in when Obama took office and then the Republicans took over the House and everything stalled because they refused to pass any legislation Obama proposed, all in an effort to limit him to one term. Any bill that made it past the House, was fillibustered in the Senate. The recovery slowed but continued and the voters of the US came to see that the Republicans were prepared to let the whole country go to hell in a handbasket rather the let this President have any sort of achievements to run on.

I'm still chuckling over the Republicans fillibustering their own bill to allow Obama to control the debt ceiling because Mitch McConnell thought he had enough Democratic support to get a simple majority defeat for it. When all of the Democratic Senators voted in favour of the bill and it passed, McConnell was arguing that his own bill was far too important an issue to be decided by a simple majority. Priceless.

You just can't make this shit up.

No they are not. Obama will be protected by the MSM. Period.

 

[thereisnospoon]

There are lots of ways that the quality of life in a society benefits from investments in our communities, schools, and infrastructure.

Taxation is NOT an investment.
The private sector can do everything the government can do. And do it better and less expensively.
Only the undying need to create government employment stands in the way of the private sector.

Damn. What a totally dumb fuck. The private sector gave us the First Great Republican Depression, and damned near gave us the Second Great Republican Depression.

Our government of "We, the People" has done many great things very well. The Corps of Discorvery. World War 2. Transcontinental railroad. Social Security. Homestead Act. Apolla Program. CCC's. WPA. And so many other things.

While people like you have done nothing at all but whine.

Nonsense..And since you decided to call me a dumb fuck...Ya know what? Never mind. I am not stooping to your level.