Comment on 'Go woke, go broke'
voracitude@lemmy.world 1 year agoYou forgot to tell me what this “destruction” will look like, but I’ll address what you’ve said so far.
So you’re rich enough that wealth taxes would impact you, meaning you have over the last three years either:
- Held at least a billion dollars in assets, or
- Earned over $100 million dollars income
For each of the last three years. That would make sense then that you don’t need social programs, and would consider them stupid. But the people flipping your burgers, educating your children, and fighting your wars are not in that position, and will benefit from the social programmes you have no use for.
We’ll leave “micromanage people’s lives” as read, because I’m sure you’re talking about guns and COVID, but I think you’ll find curbing voting rights and politicians making medical decisions for people aren’t “blue ideas”.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I didn’t mention a wealth tax. Blue states tend to have high property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes. We do not have a sales tax in Oregon but we do have property and income. The income tax is one of the highest in the nation.
Nice strawman, but when have I ever said an adult couldn’t make their own medical decisions? As a doctor, I strongly believe in body autonomy for adults. While I don’t practice anymore, I still hold that as a gold standard that all adults should choose the care they want.
I have not seen any curbing of voting rights. I have seen changes to make the system better but nothing that prevents a legal voter from voting. In many cases they have enhanced the ability for people to vote.
voracitude@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s not a strawman, it’s an educated guess based on the zeitgeist. You haven’t said adults can’t make their own medical decisions, but a major political party is all about controlling reproductive care, and it isn’t the Democrats. You tried say it’s a “blue idea” to meddle in people’s lives, I’ve just raised a counterpoint showing it’s not. That’s all.
And yes, you didn’t mention a wealth tax, but that’s the current “blue idea” on taxation. Poor Californians pay less in tax than most other states: cato.org/…/are-taxes-really-lower-california-texa…
But those are just numbers, I was interested in what you’re actually concerned about with this “destruction”. So it’s fair to say you worry that a blue influx will result in more taxes, and more regulations curbing personal freedoms?
By the way, if you haven’t seen efforts to curb voting rights, then you’ve had your eyes closed: www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/…/index.html
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Conservatives are not like liberals. We do not share a group mind. We each have our own opinions. The religious right is more prone to be anti-abortion on religious grounds. I am not religious and as such have no qualms with the ethical choice of abortion. I believe each person has the right to make their medical decisions without your sky god being involved. I am not anti-religious though. I do attend mass on holidays and other times throughout the year but it is more for tradition.
Not in absolute terms but in all terms they are higher. In my red state I paid 4.5 for income tax. In Oregon, I pay 10%.
If you look at the Cato article, it discredits California as a low tax state.
Having lived in both states, California is much more heavily taxed than Texas. I admit I was only in Texas briefly but overall the taxes were lower.
The devil is in the details for voting. WIthout a specific example, it’s hard to say. Personally I wish we would not let poor people vote. The founding fathers would never allowed that and I agree with them.
HorreC@kbin.social 1 year ago
What about being poor makes you unfit to vote? And what is poor, is it a hard line number, is it home and land ownership, what is the corral you would like these voting people to be in? Also this is what we left when we got away from the lords and ladies system of the monarchy, and I think the founding fathers would frown on this idea.
voracitude@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I just have to address this first. You’re tipping your hand there a bit, mate, but I’ll engage with it. First off, this only makes any kind of sense if you take the view that people are poor because of bad choices, rather than being kept there by lack of opportunity and/or the systems we have in place (educational, correctional, social, governmental/administrative - you name it). If you think that intelligent people can be poor, then you shouldn’t take this view as you’re limiting the potential of our whole nation. Secondly, barring a very few outliers the reddest states are consistently the poorest, and consistently rank worst in education. If you want to ban the poors from voting, you hand the country to the Democrats and their “bad blue ideas”.
I cannot believe that you, a doctor, would argue for throwing away our best and brightest just because they aren’t born into privilege. I know you’re going to say that’s not what you’re arguing, that if they’re that clever they can make something of themselves, or some other bullshit rooted in the theoretical - don’t bother. It won’t work like that because the world isn’t theoretical, and it’s been tried before in various forms. You should reconsider that position.
You may be right about tax rates. It’s a complicated question; as that Cato article also points out by noting that their findings are in direct opposition to findings from other organisations, and that much of the detail is in how you measure it. How else do you explain getting opposite answers with the same data? I think if you would allow me to correct myself, I would say the “effective” tax rate is higher in Texas and other red states, for the poor. That is the demographic disproportionately affected by (for example) natural disasters, unconstrained energy bills, medical emergencies, and a lack of social programmes.
As to your personal experience, you yourself say you are a doctor, so you are absolutely not in a lower income bracket, and that you’d pay less income tax in a red state is a given because a lot of them don’t have income taxes at all. That’s the whole point, though. If you’re gonna have an income tax, people who make $30,000 a year should pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than someone making $100,000 a year.
I’m sure you can agree that 4.5% of $30,000 ($1,350) is a much bigger hit than 10% of $100,000 ($10,000) because things still cost what they cost. After all, it’s a lot easier to live on $90,000 for a year than it is on $28,650 for the same period, no matter what state you’re in. Gas, food, electricity, water, etc all cost roughly the same (for rich and poor people in the same region, not across the country obviously) regardless of your income; sure, you can spend more on it if you make more, but there’s only so low you can go in the other direction. Meanwhile the ability to spend more also saves money in the long run, as the necessities you buy like clothes and tools will last longer before they need repair or replacement.
This maths is the main reason I support a wealth tax (on people who are statistically likely to have a lot more money than you, but if you’re actually by chance a billionaire - yes, on you, but I’ll let you pay up front at a discount, DM me for details). The only reason it’s possible to earn that much money in the first place is because of infrastructure that we, as a society, built and pay for. Businesses run by our collective labour. If you make money via use of that infrastructure, you should pay a proportionate amount back for maintenance and expansion. If you make money off our labour, we deserve a fair cut. And if you don’t think I’m right about the importance of the infrastructure, or the labour, by all means go buy a derelict oil rig and build your own nation, with your own infrastructure - I’m sure it’ll go swimmingly, this time around.
If you wanna compare “group think”, the right are overwhelmingly single-issue voters, and we are seeing exactly what they’ll excuse before they vote any other way (for my money, it sure doesn’t seem like there’s a line that won’t be crossed). It’s astounding that you can look at how the left talks about Biden, or how Democrat politicians are held to account far more strictly than Republicans, and think there’s more “group think” there than the right and their fawning over fascist assholes like Trump and DeSantis. The projection with this statement is nothing short of ridiculous.
If you vote Republican, it doesn’t matter how you feel about reproductive care personally. “Her body, her choice” is one of those “blue ideas” you hold in such disdain. “Abortion should never be allowed under any circumstances, even if carrying to term is medically inadvisable or would outright kill the mother” is a “red idea”. That’s not unique to the right, though - if you vote Democrat, it doesn’t matter how you personally feel about (for example) war crimes or genocide being committed in Gaza. Sure seems like the Dems gonna fund it regardless.
I think we might actually even agree on taxes, if we sat down and hashed it out. Again, statistically, you and I are in the same income bracket as far as I’m concerned (and I do not make six figures - closer than many, but not by much). But while I do think an influx of Democrats to the South will change it, I remain unconvinced it’ll look anything like “destruction”.