Why Are Republicans So Relentlessly Cruel to the Poor?

[Cecilie1200]

Yes, people have choices. People often choose to buy inferior shit because it's cheaper, or because they've been advertised to death and just zombie walk into buy things.

If people had the choice to buy healthier food for cheaper, would they then buy healthy food or would they still buy the sugary shit? I know when I was a young adult I ate too much shit because it was cheaper and I didn't have much money.

I'm not talking about taking choices away from people. I'm talking about adjusting the choices so they make more sense to people.

When sugary drinks are cheaper than healthy drinks, what do people buy? They buy the sugary drinks because they can afford those. Give people the choice to buy healthy food at affordable prices and then they have a real choice.

Your "choice" is that they have cheap sugary drinks and expensive healthy food and then they're making a choice, it's still a choice if healthy food is cheaper and sugary drinks more expensive than they are now.

healthy food is NOT more expensive than processed crap
Soda is not cheaper than water or even iced tea you make at home

like I said if you eat off the dollar menu for every meal every day you spend more than enough money to buy real food for the week

Processed food is fattening, unhealthy crap. Look at the packaging. Sugary crap. All you can buy in the inner city.

uh huh.

Does Franco really think that there are no stores selling produce and fresh meat in cities?

yes he actually believes that there are no supermarkets in any city in the USA

Maybe we should tell him that the Internet does more than provide porn, and one can actually Google "butcher shops" - for example - in any inner-city neighborhood one chooses and get a whole list of the frigging things.

 

[Cecilie1200]

11 million people got jobs under Obama
Three times the number that got jobs under BOTH Bush's

Sure didn't accomplish very much considering the MILLIONS of people who have dropped out of the workforce. Please don't throw up that debunked Progressive talking point regarding the baby boomers retiring. You are "forgetting" that millions come into the workforce as they reach 16 and millions enter our country by way of legal and illegal immigration.

Civilian labor force in the United States from 1990 to 2016 (in millions)

December 2008 154.29 Million

December 2016 159.19 Million

U.S. labor force 1990-2016 | Timeline


US Population by Year

July 1, 2009 306.77 Million

Mar 1, 2017 323.42 Million

US Population by Year

40 million baby boomers retiring kind of kills your theory

Can we talk about stay at home moms, the handicapped and students now?

only the mentally or physically handicapped are due government assistance. Students are students by choice. moms are moms by choice.

And families would be able to survive on one income, and have stay-at-home moms, if the government weren't so intent on picking everyone's pockets to give money away.

Don't even get me started on the government's encouraging of the proliferation of single mothers.

 

[Cecilie1200]

[Qwould take 40 or 50 high paid civil servants to do the same thing.

Charities spend a large percentage of their efforts fund raising and advertising .....not very efficient
Government has a steady flow of revenue, some of which goes to help We the People

Leaders of private charities get paid more than civil servants

You mean like the Clinton Foundation that spends only about 10% of the money for services? The rest goes ot things like wedding dresses for Chelsea.

Once again you are confused Moon Bat.

You have a choice of how you contribute money to charity. You chose who you want to help and how much you want to give. Filthy ass bloated government welfare program robs a person of their liberty to chose where their money goes and that is despicable. Especially when you know that a large cost of the welfare system is nothing more than a scheme for the Democrats to buy vote from the welfare queens. Disgusting isn't it?

ACTUALLY, 10% is the overhead, 90% is what they spend on good works. You believe a giant pile of Pubcrappe, dupe. The Foundation IS THE CHARITY, rated A+. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You are confused Moon Bat

The Foundation IS a charity, brainwashed functional moron.[/QUOTE]

A very inefficient, wasteful one in the classic liberal government model.

 

[Cecilie1200]

when the government does what for negative reasons and what negative reasons?

and what tax breaks to candy companies get that healthy food companies don't get?

people have choices. Those companies you mention only exist because people CHOOSE to buy their products and those choices are none of yours or the government's business

Yes, people have choices. People often choose to buy inferior shit because it's cheaper, or because they've been advertised to death and just zombie walk into buy things.

If people had the choice to buy healthier food for cheaper, would they then buy healthy food or would they still buy the sugary shit? I know when I was a young adult I ate too much shit because it was cheaper and I didn't have much money.

I'm not talking about taking choices away from people. I'm talking about adjusting the choices so they make more sense to people.

When sugary drinks are cheaper than healthy drinks, what do people buy? They buy the sugary drinks because they can afford those. Give people the choice to buy healthy food at affordable prices and then they have a real choice.

Your "choice" is that they have cheap sugary drinks and expensive healthy food and then they're making a choice, it's still a choice if healthy food is cheaper and sugary drinks more expensive than they are now.

healthy food is NOT more expensive than processed crap
Soda is not cheaper than water or even iced tea you make at home

like I said if you eat off the dollar menu for every meal every day you spend more than enough money to buy real food for the week

Processed food is fattening, unhealthy crap. Look at the packaging. Sugary crap. All you can buy in the inner city.

uh huh.

Why do you think diabetes is an epidemic, esp. in black areas? DUH.

Personal choice.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Criminalizing being poor has been done all throughout history.

not in USA we bail them out at a cost of $trillions and they never have to pay back a penny!!

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

Way to justify being cruel to the least fortunate among us. You sound like an average 'Good Christian' Republican wanker. Jesus is not proud of you my friend.

And when did Jesus put you in charge of making those calls for him????

Y'all 'Good American'/Good Christian' Republicans really should go back and read Jesus' teachings again. You clearly didn't get it. Till you get right with Jesus again, you're just gonna be frauds playing the role of the 'Good American/Good Christian.'

For most of my childhood, I was raised in an all Catholic school. I was even an alter boy.

Jesus never taught that government should forcefully take from people to give to anybody. Jesus taught that you should give of yourself through your own free will. According to Jesus, charity is an individual thing--not a government thing. Jesus didn't get along with the government very well back in his time.

Taking a persons property against their will is called theft, and theft is in God's top ten no-no's in life. Stealing property from people is just wrong no matter what you use the seized property for.

You, sir, are a breath of sane air in a mental asylum peopled with babbling leftist nitwits. Thank you.

 

[Cecilie1200]

but they give more to charity than liberals??

I'll repeat:

Conservatives tend to donate to their churches (tax deductable) which in turn, contribute a small amount of that back to actual charities. The predominant church in my area considers itself a charitable organization for the tax benefits but the actual amount of charity is about 1%.

How do you know that? Are you a member of the church or did you just grab that 1% out of your ass?

Because I worked the numbers. That's what the predominant religion in my area contributes. Maybe some religions are more generous - but I doubt it's by much.

May I just say, for someone who claims to be an accountant, you are remarkably stupid when it comes to financial issues - particularly those in your own purported field - and the way the world works in general? If you really believe that churches work by "contributing money back to actual charities" . . . just, wow.

Here's a little primer on the way REAL churches work, courtesy of the preacher's daughter. You're welcome.

1) Churches are classified as tax-exempt charitable organizations. That is why donations to them are tax-deductible: because they are, themselves, "actual charities", just as much as Goodwill or the Red Cross or the Pediatric AIDS Foundation are.

2) What this means is that, while they may or may not contribute assistance to other charities, they typically engage in and administer charitable behavior directly. For example, the Catholic Church - the best-known of the Christian denominations - operates soup kitchens, homeless shelters and aid for the indigent, drug rehabilitation centers, food distribution centers, orphanages and care facilities for foster children, nursing homes and adult day care centers, medical clinics and hospitals, domestic violence shelters . . . and that's just off the top of my head. When the government runs out of assistance programs to offer you, they give you a big list of private charities in your area, and guaranteed, at least half of them will be under the auspices of the Catholic Church.

3) In order to maintain its tax-exempt status, a church must spend a substantial percentage of its income on its not-for-profit activities (hint: that percentage is NOT 1%). There are limits to how much money an individual church can keep on hand, and whole reams of tax regulations governing how that is handled.

4) If a church engages in a for-profit activity - for example, renting out a house or building it owns to tenants - then that income can be taxed, and separate records need to be kept for that purpose. Again, there are whole reams of regulations regarding how this is handled.

I can go on if you need me to, but absolutely none of this is a secret, or even particularly hard to find out, unless one has a serious hate-on toward churches and works at remaining ignorant of the functions they perform in their communities. And I would have to suggest that such a person would definitely not be the best person for a church to turn to for financial and accounting services.

I don't know where you got the idea that I'm an accountant. I'm an engineer and as such, no stranger to numbers.

The only charities that I'm aware of that this church engages in is offering food assistance to its members, blankets to disaster areas (which they promote to maximum PR effect) and hiring the nearly unhireable for their thrift stores. Given the PR efforts that I've seen, if there were anything else, I'd have heard about it. The rest of the money as far as I can tell goes into edifice building, funding of initiatives to influence public policy and proselytizing (particularly missionary support). It has become a large corporation with its own accounting, legal and PR arms in order to maximize profit and minimize tax exposure.

If I misread one of your posts in regards to your occupation, I apologize.

That being said, there's a world of difference between "no stranger to numbers" in the engineering field, and knowing jack shit about accounting and finance in the non-profit world. Which, one assumes, is why they don't hand out CPAs to people with engineering degrees.

Without knowing which church you're discussing, I can't address what they do and don't do in any specificity. I can tell you, however, that if they hold tax-exempt status as a charitable institution, they ARE spending the bulk of their money on not-for-profit activities. They have to, because it's required by law.

And no, you probably wouldn't have heard about it in their PR efforts, because that's not how advertising works.

Perhaps you should explore the phrases "that I'm aware of" and "as far as I can tell". Exactly how far have you gone in your information gathering? Are you actually a member of the church? Did you, perhaps, speak to the pastor and ask him questions? Or did you just drive by on the street and make assumptions?

All churches have accounting and legal representation, hon. They have to, because tax law for non-profits is incredibly arcane, and very easy to run afoul of. In case you were wondering, the Red Cross ALSO has accountants, lawyers, and advertising departments.

If I'm supposed to condemn churches for wanting to keep as much of their donations as possible for their own activities, and minimize the interference of the IRS, you're barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Cecilie1200]

You ever been homeless? If not, you don't know shite. They're often harassed by Republican Nazi jerkoffs.

As I thought. You've got NOTHING!

Bullshite. It is you Republican Nazi jerkoffs who routinely harass our poor homeless. You wanna 'Disappear' them. You wanna lock them away in cages forever. You're pretty evil folks. It is what it is.

They have really good medications for paranoia these days. Look into it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

not in USA we bail them out at a cost of $trillions and they never have to pay back a penny!!

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

Way to justify being cruel to the least fortunate among us. You sound like an average 'Good Christian' Republican wanker. Jesus is not proud of you my friend.

And when did Jesus put you in charge of making those calls for him????

Y'all 'Good American'/Good Christian' Republicans really should go back and read Jesus' teachings again. You clearly didn't get it. Till you get right with Jesus again, you're just gonna be frauds playing the role of the 'Good American/Good Christian.'

For most of my childhood, I was raised in an all Catholic school. I was even an alter boy.

Jesus never taught that government should forcefully take from people to give to anybody. Jesus taught that you should give of yourself through your own free will. According to Jesus, charity is an individual thing--not a government thing. Jesus didn't get along with the government very well back in his time.

Taking a persons property against their will is called theft, and theft is in God's top ten no-no's in life. Stealing property from people is just wrong no matter what you use the seized property for.

Seriously, go back and read Jesus' teachings again. You've lost your way. You've allowed hate & greed to consume you. You let the Devil in.

Seriously, Reverence Dschrute, there is not a single person here with the slightest interest in spiritual and Biblical guidance from you.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Wow. This thread is still going? Guys, it's already been answered. Post #38.

A prime example of why I advocate a "Dictionaries for Democrats" program.

Learn the difference between "answer" and "hate-filled rant".

 

[Cecilie1200]

Where'd he go lol?

Given that you were posting at almost-midnight, I'm gonna guess he went to bed, idiot.

 

[Papageorgio]

He didn't have a clue about the attack. Even if he did, WTF was he supposed to do about it? Close down all the airports across the country? He had no more way of knowing about 911 than Clinton did about the OKC bombing. But of course because Clinton could do no wrong, you'd never try to place any blame on him for the bombing.

Bush left us open to attack

He made no effort to enhance antiterrorist protections despite being repeatedly warned about the threat......he had better things to do

3000 Americans died

Remain ignorant if it makes you feel better. But the CBS report I posted states differently, it's just that it doesn't fit in your "blame Republicans" for everything mantra. Nor does it support your left-wing brainwashing sites that I'm sure you frequent daily.

Want to blame Bush for 911? Fine, now let's see you blame Bill Clinton for the first WTC attacks. Let's see you blame Bill Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing. Let's see you blame Bill Clinton for all the planning of 911 that went on while he was President.

What's that I hear.... crickets? I thought so.

Problem is, there is no evidence for that, while for Booosh and 9/11 there is plenty...

What a complete moron you fake teacher you. I just posted a report showing that Bush had no idea of the attack, and your stupidity tells you to say just the opposite of the report, making false claims of evidence you didn't (and won't) provide.

You are about as much of a retired teacher as I am a retired astronaut. How can you say such stupid things repeatedly and try to convince us that you're anything less than a welfare queen?

Why would I lie, ignoramus? BTW, you ought to try reading your own link- and there is plenty more like this. Booosh, Cheney, and Rummie were total incompetents like you...obnoxious too.

"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that while President Bush was told last summer that bin Laden's al Qaeda network might hijack planes, "until the attack took place, I think it's fair to say that no one envisioned that [using planes as suicide bombs] as a possibility."

However, a federal report issued exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks contrasts with that statement.

The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," warned the executive branch that bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.

It described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al Qaeda might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.

The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.

And it's come out that an agent in the FBI's Arizona office also speculated about using planes as weapons, writing in his case notes about Zacarias Moussaoui that Moussaoui seemed like the type of person who was capable of flying an aircraft into the World Trade Center.

It was the observation of an agent taking notes as he thought about his case - an observation whose significance simply did not register at the time.

Separately, the New York Times reports that an FBI agent in Arizona warned his superiors last summer that bin Laden might be sending students to U.S. flight schools.

The FBI failed to make a connection between that warning and the August arrest of Moussaoui - a French citizen of Moroccan descent detained in Minnesota after raising suspicions among his instructors at a flight school where he said he wanted to know how to fly, but not how to land or take off.

Moussaoui has emerged as the lone defendant charged in the aftermath of the attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. He is charged with conspiring with bin Laden and the 19 suicide hijackers to attack Americans.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said repeatedly that he wishes the FBI had acted more aggressively in addressing the Arizona and Minnesota leads. Mueller has also said that nothing the FBI possessed before Sept. 11 pointed to the plot."

Guess what- a policy wonk like Gore would have been all over this and the real estate bubble too. Great job, GOP and silly dupes like you...Presto no ME OR Wall St catastrophe.

If the reports were written two years before the attacks, why didn't Clinton have a plan in place? Seems to me if the threat was as serious as claimed, the Clinton administration would have been all over it and would have captured Bin Laden when he had been given the chance.

 

[Avatar4321]

A thought struck me as I saw the thread title today. That is the wrong question.

Not because it is not accurate. It isn't but that isn't the reason. People are cruel no matter what their politics. People can be generous regardless of politics.

The question we should be asking is "what can I do to help the poor?"

We can't change the hearts and minds of others. We can only change ourselves.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Yes, people have choices. People often choose to buy inferior shit because it's cheaper, or because they've been advertised to death and just zombie walk into buy things.

If people had the choice to buy healthier food for cheaper, would they then buy healthy food or would they still buy the sugary shit? I know when I was a young adult I ate too much shit because it was cheaper and I didn't have much money.

I'm not talking about taking choices away from people. I'm talking about adjusting the choices so they make more sense to people.

When sugary drinks are cheaper than healthy drinks, what do people buy? They buy the sugary drinks because they can afford those. Give people the choice to buy healthy food at affordable prices and then they have a real choice.

Your "choice" is that they have cheap sugary drinks and expensive healthy food and then they're making a choice, it's still a choice if healthy food is cheaper and sugary drinks more expensive than they are now.

healthy food is NOT more expensive than processed crap
Soda is not cheaper than water or even iced tea you make at home

like I said if you eat off the dollar menu for every meal every day you spend more than enough money to buy real food for the week

Processed food is fattening, unhealthy crap. Look at the packaging. Sugary crap. All you can buy in the inner city.

uh huh.

Why do you think diabetes is an epidemic, esp. in black areas? DUH.

because the fat people CHOOSE to eat like crap

No, not all fat people choose to do it. Some are addicted, some have metabolism problems, and some just eat crap.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Oh really. So why do we have a law against murder? Why not go Discworld and make it okay as long as you're in a guild or something?

Why is making a law against murder not about controlling people for their own good?

It's about preventing people from doing harm to other people. That's controlling people for the good of others, not for their own good.

Controlling them for their own good assumes that they're too stupid to make good decisions for themselves and need a nanny state to take care of them. Ultimately, why do you think ANYONE has/ should have the authority to make those decisions for other people?

Well surely controlling them for the good of others assumes they're too stupid to realize that someone doesn't want to be murdered and that they need the nanny state to tell them not to murder, or some religion to tell them.

The problem we have here is that we're not talking about telling people what they can and can't do. We're simply stating that healthy things have less tax on them than things that are not so healthy so that people can make a choice. You know, I could murder or I could not murder... hmm... well I might go to prison or be executed if I murder, so I'm not going to do it. I could buy a snickers or I could buy a salad, both are okay, however the snickers is cheaper, I'll take that as I don't have much money, oh, wait, the salad is now cheaper, maybe i'll go for that.

Tax policy as social engineering.

Already exists....

The question is why shouldn't you have social engineering, the right use it, the left use it, you probably even support it when it engineers what you want.

so just because it's used it's alright with you?

And it's not abut what you want. People have the right to choose what they want and what anyone wants is none of your of the government's business

No, that isn't what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying it exists already and you're probably fine with it being used in certain ways, you just don't realize that it is being used like that.

Yes, people have the right to choose what they want. At no point have I said people couldn't choose what they want.

This is about accepting the fact that the US has a major weight problem, and a major problem with sugar all over the place, and taxing things higher which cause problems. I understand that you have a problem with this, and I doubt I'm ever going to convince you of this. If I can't convince you of something when I have all the facts pointing to my argument and you have no facts, how am I going to convince you that sometimes you have to do the right thing?

 

[frigidweirdo]

Yes, people have choices. People often choose to buy inferior shit because it's cheaper, or because they've been advertised to death and just zombie walk into buy things.

If people had the choice to buy healthier food for cheaper, would they then buy healthy food or would they still buy the sugary shit? I know when I was a young adult I ate too much shit because it was cheaper and I didn't have much money.

I'm not talking about taking choices away from people. I'm talking about adjusting the choices so they make more sense to people.

When sugary drinks are cheaper than healthy drinks, what do people buy? They buy the sugary drinks because they can afford those. Give people the choice to buy healthy food at affordable prices and then they have a real choice.

Your "choice" is that they have cheap sugary drinks and expensive healthy food and then they're making a choice, it's still a choice if healthy food is cheaper and sugary drinks more expensive than they are now.

healthy food is NOT more expensive than processed crap
Soda is not cheaper than water or even iced tea you make at home

like I said if you eat off the dollar menu for every meal every day you spend more than enough money to buy real food for the week

The problem here is that people CAN do things cheaper, but they need to be EDUCATED in how to do things, this is becoming a cycle of you compartmentalizing things and then dismissing them all, but then finding out that what you said shouldn't happen is what should happen to deal with the next thing.

you don't have to educate people about what they already know

you want to get educated on food prices then get your ass to the supermarket and look around

you don't need some government program for that

Well, you're wrong.

Firstly, what "people know" is usually full of mistruths, things that are plain wrong, assumptions and the like. Secondly what they know will be on the basic level, and not on a detailed level, and sometimes this isn't enough to encourage people to do something about it.

I've changed my eating habits lately because I've found stuff out that disturbs me. I know sugar is bad for me, but I ate it anyway. Why? Because I could get away with it. What I wasn't considering was the sugar not only makes people fat, it causes other problems that I did not know about, and for that reason and other issues involving diabetes because a family member was told they'd get diabetes and they didn't get it because they went on a strict diet, when their father had got diabetes.

You're trying to make this issue as simple as possible. It's not just about food prices. Hence why education is needed. No doubt you could learn a lot, you just haven't.

So here's for some education.

Sugar and what it does to your brain.

It leads to hyperactivity.
It leads to yeast growth, things like eczema, throat infections and ear infections. So if you have these problems it could potentially be because of too much sugar.
It hinders the absorption of vitamin B into your body. Vitamin B helps regulate your blood sugar levels. It also reduces the amount of oxygen going to the brain and it increase adrenaline in your body. The impact of these are forgetfulness, mood swings and other negative issues.

I had a look at McDonald's food calculator and a medium sized milkshake has 200% the daily recommended value for sugar for a 7-10 year old. A Big Mac has 33%. You go take kids on a trip to McDonalds and you could be giving them a massive dose of sugar 300% or more of their daily recommended value for just one meal. Then add that to the other two meals and snacks in a day and you might be looking at 600% daily recommended value. Imagine what this does to a kid's education. They're going to suffer at school, not meet their potential. You see all these kids that are overweight.

Childhood Obesity Facts | Overweight & Obesity | CDC

36.5% of American adults are overweight. Probably a large portion of these take too much sugar in their daily lives.
12.7 million children are obese.

"The prevalence of obesity among children aged 2 to 5 years decreased significantly from 13.9% in 2003-2004 to 9.4% in 2013-2014."

The rate is lowering. However it's not surprising that the highest rates of obesity are in the places with the worst education

you have no idea what I know about nutrition and what I have learned I learned without some government program to tell me.

everyone already knows what's healthy and what's not. Even you admitted that. So wasting money telling people what to eat is not going to change anything

No, I don't. That wasn't the point I was making. The point is that most people don't know what I just wrote.

Just because you learned what you learned without a govt program, doesn't mean that others can't learn from govt programs, or that govt programs aren't effective.

You keep pounding on that everyone knows. I keep telling you that people know basics and it's often not enough, which is clear when 1/3 of US people are OBESE. You think people want to be obese? I grew up with a girl who struggled her ass off to not be overweight and failed miserably, and the main reason was her parents didn't know shit about how to stop her from eating shit. He whole life has been a struggle, and it's not her fault. Education would have changed this.

You seem to think education is bad, and you can see what poor education is doing to the US, and it's not positive.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Oh really. So why do we have a law against murder? Why not go Discworld and make it okay as long as you're in a guild or something?

Why is making a law against murder not about controlling people for their own good?

It's about preventing people from doing harm to other people. That's controlling people for the good of others, not for their own good.

Controlling them for their own good assumes that they're too stupid to make good decisions for themselves and need a nanny state to take care of them. Ultimately, why do you think ANYONE has/ should have the authority to make those decisions for other people?

Well surely controlling them for the good of others assumes they're too stupid to realize that someone doesn't want to be murdered and that they need the nanny state to tell them not to murder, or some religion to tell them.

The problem we have here is that we're not talking about telling people what they can and can't do. We're simply stating that healthy things have less tax on them than things that are not so healthy so that people can make a choice. You know, I could murder or I could not murder... hmm... well I might go to prison or be executed if I murder, so I'm not going to do it. I could buy a snickers or I could buy a salad, both are okay, however the snickers is cheaper, I'll take that as I don't have much money, oh, wait, the salad is now cheaper, maybe i'll go for that.

Tax policy as social engineering.

Already exists....

The question is why shouldn't you have social engineering, the right use it, the left use it, you probably even support it when it engineers what you want.

Because power grabs never stop. In this case, all you want to do is incentivize people to make healthier food choices. That in itself is a laudable goal, but it won't stop there. You put in place your tax scheme and guess what happens next? Someone is going to think that people are still eating too much junk food and incentives are not enough, so they pass laws making it illegal to buy more than a certain amount of junk food (think NYC ban on large drink containers). And it goes from there. There is never a shortage of meddlers who think they know what's good for you more than you do.

I understand where you're coming from, and I agree.

However the problem is the US govt is just wrong, the way people vote is just wrong, that there are only two parties is just wrong. So, that also needs to change. Problem is the right don't care, they don't want change, they LIKE having this power, however they want the power to tell people what to do, and don't like it when others tell them what to do. Hypocrisy, isn't it?

Having enough parties with differing interests all having a say in how things work would mean that things would work better. The power grabs are happening in the US with or without the whole taxing food to make it an incentive to eat healthier. They're taking away your freedoms left right and center, they're going to war, and then people get angry, not at this, but that someone wants to make kids eat healthier, it's fucking insanely weird.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Okay, people, let's get seriously into this erroneous notion that leftists are charitable and generous, and conservatives are not, instead of just nibbling around the edges.

There have actually been multiple studies in recent years on this subject. Every one of them has found that, essentially, leftists define themselves as "charitable" based on the government giveaway programs they advocate, and conservatives define themselves as "charitable" based on the actual, personal effort they expend to help others.

By every measurement, people who identify as conservative are FAR more likely to give their own money and time to charitable causes than leftists are.

Even the Huffington Post, hardly a bastion of conservatism, reported that deeply red states have a much higher rate of private charitable contributions. Of course, they rushed on to try to insist that this was only because conservatives donate to their churches, but no amount of obfuscation hides the fact that, even if you factor out donations to churches, conservatives STILL have a higher rate of personal charitable giving than leftists do.

Not only that, conservatives are ALSO much more likely to donate to charity in terms of things like personal time spent (such as, for example, participating in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program). Conservatives even donate blood more than liberals do.

The big trend in these studies right now - presumably because leftists don't like that the previous studies showed them to be stingy in actual practice - is to focus on the marketing method the charity uses, and to say that, because people are more likely to donate to a charity that emphasizes an approach in keeping with their own political and world view, that means leftists and conservatives are equally charitable.

Unfortunately, if you research a little deeper, it becomes apparent that conservatives are STILL more charitable in practice. For whatever reason a person chooses a specific charity to donate to, conservatives give far more of their own personal resources than leftists do.

 

[JoeNormal]

Because I worked the numbers. That's what the predominant religion in my area contributes. Maybe some religions are more generous - but I doubt it's by much.

Who knew you are the accountant for all the churches in your area. Obviously you know nothing about how churches work and the many, many ways they help in their communities.

And obviously you don't know the ways in which some churches influence politics which undermines their value in whatever good they might do.

Really? And what are these ways, and how do they coincide with the IRS regulations limiting such activity if one wishes to retain a tax-exempt status?

I hope you realize that organizations with armies of accountants and lawyers can get away with a lot of things that you and I can't. The organization in question stretches the limits of what they consider the non-profit aspects of their operation. They also have investments that even they can't consider tax exempt so they reluctantly pay taxes on them.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Because I worked the numbers. That's what the predominant religion in my area contributes. Maybe some religions are more generous - but I doubt it's by much.

Who knew you are the accountant for all the churches in your area. Obviously you know nothing about how churches work and the many, many ways they help in their communities.

And obviously you don't know the ways in which some churches influence politics which undermines their value in whatever good they might do.

Really? And what are these ways, and how do they coincide with the IRS regulations limiting such activity if one wishes to retain a tax-exempt status?

I hope you realize that organizations with armies of accountants and lawyers can get away with a lot of things that you and I can't. The organization in question stretches the limits of what they consider the non-profit aspects of their operation. They also have investments that even they can't consider tax exempt so they reluctantly pay taxes on them.

I hope you realize that assuming someone is "getting away with something" simply because you believe they CAN get away with something is utterly meaningless.

Once again, I have no idea which church you are specifically talking about, so I cannot address it. Therefore, we will not be conducting any sort of debate on their activities based on assuming that your assertions about them are correct.

Finally, I have no intention of condemning any organization for being "reluctant" to pay taxes. I consider eagerness to give money to the government to be a sign of mental illness.

 

[JoeNormal]

11 million people got jobs under Obama
Three times the number that got jobs under BOTH Bush's

Sure didn't accomplish very much considering the MILLIONS of people who have dropped out of the workforce. Please don't throw up that debunked Progressive talking point regarding the baby boomers retiring. You are "forgetting" that millions come into the workforce as they reach 16 and millions enter our country by way of legal and illegal immigration.

Civilian labor force in the United States from 1990 to 2016 (in millions)

December 2008 154.29 Million

December 2016 159.19 Million

U.S. labor force 1990-2016 | Timeline


US Population by Year

July 1, 2009 306.77 Million

Mar 1, 2017 323.42 Million

US Population by Year

40 million baby boomers retiring kind of kills your theory

Can we talk about stay at home moms, the handicapped and students now?

only the mentally or physically handicapped are due government assistance. Students are students by choice. moms are moms by choice.

And families would be able to survive on one income, and have stay-at-home moms, if the government weren't so intent on picking everyone's pockets to give money away.

Don't even get me started on the government's encouraging of the proliferation of single mothers.

One of the seemingly defining qualities of conservatives is that they misidentify 'the enemy' about 90% of the time. We didn't evolve into a society where two breadwinners are the norm because of government. It's because of the constant pressure that corporations put on increasing profitability.