46th President of the United States, Joe Biden

[tangerine_sedge]

blackrabbit said:

kowalski655 said:

That dangerous leftie, giving people healthcare, voting rights, money to live on, vaccines, etc, can't hear the 1% NEED that 5th yacht! Won't someone think of the billionaires!

You do realise that by handing out money this way all it will do is hurt middle classes by direct/indirect tax and product increases and benefit the top 0.1% who own outright or by share ownership companies selling crap to the people getting these hand outs? All Dems are doing is encouraging laziness and creating more class warfare. Billionaires are getting richer either way due to automation and globalisation and no-one can stop that. Smart billionaire money already changed investments based on the election outcome. Notice how petrol prices have doubled in the US (since the Democrats stopped new pipelines) where 99% of people have no access to public transport? Notice how Warren Buffet and co all bought significantly into oil companies yet are big Democrat supporters.

If the goal is to give money to the needy from Covid impact then raise un-employment insurance. Don't throw money at anyone under 150k whether or not they have lost their job.

This is to help people with funeral expenses. I'm not sure that there are that many billionaires running funeral parlours.

Petrol prices have gone from 0.66USD to 0.75USD per litre since Xmas (in fact, look at the 5 yr price and you'll see it move around a lot during that period). Not doubled, and not linked to the Keystone XL decision. Why would prices increase because the pipeline which doesn't exist continues to not exist?

link here

first link

It's good to see you've remembered the password for your second account though, so it's not all bad news for you.

[rscott]

tangerine_sedge said:

blackrabbit said:

kowalski655 said:

That dangerous leftie, giving people healthcare, voting rights, money to live on, vaccines, etc, can't hear the 1% NEED that 5th yacht! Won't someone think of the billionaires!

You do realise that by handing out money this way all it will do is hurt middle classes by direct/indirect tax and product increases and benefit the top 0.1% who own outright or by share ownership companies selling crap to the people getting these hand outs? All Dems are doing is encouraging laziness and creating more class warfare. Billionaires are getting richer either way due to automation and globalisation and no-one can stop that. Smart billionaire money already changed investments based on the election outcome. Notice how petrol prices have doubled in the US (since the Democrats stopped new pipelines) where 99% of people have no access to public transport? Notice how Warren Buffet and co all bought significantly into oil companies yet are big Democrat supporters.

If the goal is to give money to the needy from Covid impact then raise un-employment insurance. Don't throw money at anyone under 150k whether or not they have lost their job.

This is to help people with funeral expenses. I'm not sure that there are that many billionaires running funeral parlours.

Petrol prices have gone from 0.66USD to 0.75USD per litre since Xmas (in fact, look at the 5 yr price and you'll see it move around a lot during that period). Not doubled, and not linked to the Keystone XL decision. Why would prices increase because the pipeline which doesn't exist continues to not exist?

link here

first link

It's good to see you've remembered the password for your second account though, so it's not all bad news for you.

Looking at the 5 year stats, gas prices are only back to the level they were 2 years ago.

[HM-2]

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

It is exactly what the Twitter posts are about.

I literally POSTED the Twitter exchange. It's there clear as day that it has nothing to do with what you are claiming it does.
Pretending otherwise is, quite frankly, utterly insane.

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

The funeral payment scheme is not means tested

You seem to think you have a point here, but this is utterly irrelevant because of the criteria that submitters need to meet in order to get assistance.

Means testing costs money. It's entirely plausible- and in fact frequently happens- that the cost of administering the means testing process outweighing the savings it's designed to actually produce. I suspect there will have been plenty of economic assessments designed to tease out best case versus worst case scenarios and assess most likely outcomes before a policy was adopted.

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

AOC also points out that people can seek to have death certificates altered where it does not include Covid

Which is a prerogative within some states- given how poor the US recording of death rates associated with Covid-19 during the early stages of the pandemic, I think it's entirely rational and reasonable to be able to revisit available evidence and make a better informed assessment.

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

It'll get spaffed by the poor in two seconds flat

Wow. Just wow.

In a sea of fairly stty hot takes, this really does take the cake.

blackrabbit said:

You do realise that by handing out money this way all it will do is hurt middle classes by direct/indirect tax and product increases and benefit the top 0.1% who own outright or by share ownership companies selling crap to the people getting these hand outs?

There's literally zero empirical evidence that this is the case, and a wealth of it entirely rebutting the notion that improving wealth of low income individuals primarily benefits the upper classes.

Imagine genuinely and honestly believing in trickle-down economics.

Edited by HM-2 on Thursday 15th April 16:24

[tangerine_sedge]

In other news :

Biden acting like a President

Biden acts tough on Russian Cyber attacks, unlike other presidents who just had secret meetings...

[anonymous-user]

HM-2 said:

There's literally zero empirical evidence that this is the case, and a wealth of it entirely rebutting the notion that improving wealth of low income individuals primarily benefits the upper classes.

Imagine genuinely and honestly believing in trickle-down economics.

Edited by HM-2 on Thursday 15th April 16:24

If you give low income people handouts, they don't put it into their kids' JISA, they give it to uncles Benson & Hedges and Granny Stella. It's fluff money. You may as well give it to BAT or InBev or whoever makes their choice of poison.

Giving them money instead of teaching them how to earn it is a control mechanism. It buys you favour and keeps them in your pocket. There's nothing altruistic about it. There was a word for people you kept in survitude and threw scraps at. It's not a popular one anymore.

[blackrabbit]

rscott said:

Looking at the 5 year stats, gas prices are only back to the level they were 2 years ago.

Yes but look at the stats since the election. Costs have gone up for Americans since the pipeline moratorium and billionaires won that trade.

[blackrabbit]

HM-2 said:

There's literally zero empirical evidence that this is the case, and a wealth of it entirely rebutting the notion that improving wealth of low income individuals primarily benefits the upper classes.

Imagine genuinely and honestly believing in trickle-down economics.

Edited by HM-2 on Thursday 15th April 16:24

I said the benefits of the stimulus payments in any form benefit the very wealthy. Look at the stock market right now.

Where do you think these payments are being spent if not a company owned by the wealthy? Landlords love a stimulus too as they still get their rents paid. Vast majority of the infrastructure bill benefits big business as does the stimulus payments.

Its actually trickle up not down......................

[hidetheelephants]

andy_s said:

When you stare into the abyss...

... Mitch McConnell stares back?

[HM-2]

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

If you give low income people handouts, they don't put it into their kids' JISA, they give it to uncles Benson & Hedges and Granny Stella.

Whilst high income individuals certainly succeed in saving a higher proportion of their income than lower income individuals, the assertion that "poor people just spend it on booze and fags" is an horrific, malicious, classist generalisation simply not supported by evidence.

blackrabbit said:

I said the benefits of the stimulus payments in any form benefit the very wealthy. Look at the stock market right now.

Do you always confuse correlation with causation, or just when it's convenient for your point?

blackrabbit said:

Where do you think these payments are being spent if not a company owned by the wealthy?

Imagine having an understanding of economics that's this poor.
Regardless, it's not up to me to provide evidence to show where money is actually being spent, it's up to you to provide evidence to support your assertion that the majority of subsidy spending by low-income individuals and households directly benefits the wealthy.

blackrabbit said:

Its actually trickle up not down......................

"Don't subsidise the poor because it makes the rich richer" is literally justification #1 for horse and sparrow economics.
It's also self-evidently absolute garbage, because states that have high levels of state subsidisation for low-income individual have comparatively low levels of income inequality.

Edited by HM-2 on Thursday 15th April 18:19

[tangerine_sedge]

blackrabbit said:

rscott said:

Looking at the 5 year stats, gas prices are only back to the level they were 2 years ago.

Yes but look at the stats since the election. Costs have gone up for Americans since the pipeline moratorium and billionaires won that trade.

They've certainly not doubled as you claimed. The prices in the UK have also gone up following a similar trend, almost like it's a global change - uk petrol prices over time. Something, I'm pretty sure isn't impacted by a non-existent pipeline extension or by a Biden win.

If Billionaires had won, then the pipeline would have happened and they would have transported oil more cheaply but at huge environmental impact. In fact, that's exactly what Trump wanted to do to support his billionaire buddies in the oil industry.

[tangerine_sedge]

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

HM-2 said:

There's literally zero empirical evidence that this is the case, and a wealth of it entirely rebutting the notion that improving wealth of low income individuals primarily benefits the upper classes.

Imagine genuinely and honestly believing in trickle-down economics.

Edited by HM-2 on Thursday 15th April 16:24

If you give low income people handouts, they don't put it into their kids' JISA, they give it to uncles Benson & Hedges and Granny Stella. It's fluff money. You may as well give it to BAT or InBev or whoever makes their choice of poison.

Giving them money instead of teaching them how to earn it is a control mechanism. It buys you favour and keeps them in your pocket. There's nothing altruistic about it. There was a word for people you kept in survitude and threw scraps at. It's not a popular one anymore.

It's hard to understand how they'll claim beer and fags as legitimate funeral expenses, although to be fair, they have been the hallmarks of some of the best wakes I've attended

[HM-2]

tangerine_sedge said:

It's hard to understand how they'll claim beer and fags as legitimate funeral expenses

Well quite, but let's not like the utter irrelevance of the entire argument distract lil'Ron from his hubris.

[rscott]

blackrabbit said:

rscott said:

Looking at the 5 year stats, gas prices are only back to the level they were 2 years ago.

Yes but look at the stats since the election. Costs have gone up for Americans since the pipeline moratorium and billionaires won that trade.

They've not doubled, as you claimed though.

[anonymous-user]

tangerine_sedge said:

It's hard to understand how they'll claim beer and fags as legitimate funeral expenses, although to be fair, they have been the hallmarks of some of the best wakes I've attended

In most cases of imagine they've already paid for the funeral. The state will now give them that cash back.

[HM-2]

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

tangerine_sedge said:

It's hard to understand how they'll claim beer and fags as legitimate funeral expenses, although to be fair, they have been the hallmarks of some of the best wakes I've attended

In most cases of imagine they've already paid for the funeral. The state will now give them that cash back.

How many of these do you think have used credit to pay these costs?

I imagine the number using payments to square incurred debts will be perhaps three orders of magnitude higher than those putting it in their mouth or arm.

[AW111]

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

If you give low income people handouts, they don't put it into their kids' JISA, they give it to uncles Benson & Hedges and Granny Stella. It's fluff money. You may as well give it to BAT or InBev or whoever makes their choice of poison.

You really are a piece of work.

Nasty and wrong.

[JeffreyD]

Pulling out of. Afghanistan seems like a big deal.

I presume all the America First wingnuts are all really happy about Biden now.

[rscott]

JeffreyD said:

Pulling out of. Afghanistan seems like a big deal.

I presume all the America First wingnuts are all really happy about Biden now.

They're all asking why leftists say it was bad when Trump said he'd do it, but good when Biden does.

Completely ignoring the fact that Biden's doing it in agreement with NATO.

[andy_s]

Afghanistan is a complex situation, even the media acknowledge the ambiguities...

[silentbrown]

andy_s said:

Afghanistan is a complex situation, even the media acknowledge the ambiguities...

Yes. Christina Lamb and Rory Stewart were interviewed on R4 on Wednesday. Both saying it's unlikely to end well for Afghanistan.