Of course, cutting Middle Class taxes now only to cut their Medicare and Social Security later is not really a tax cut. It's just a way to make them poor when they can no longer work.

Jackass has proven that he has a pied piper talent - just not for rats but, rather, for the entranced. He can claim ANYTHING and they will believe. When they are asked about that their response, as far as I can tell, is absolutely nothing. I think, basically, they just don't care.

Who says that there is no magic - I would suggest that, given his obviously super powers of persuasion we are obviously dealing with a kind of magic. The only real question is where these powers come from, the Lord or the Devil?

Entitlements, exactly as their name implies, are monies or services that "we" are entitled to or guaranteed to receive. They have nothing to do with the belief that one is "entitled" or inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.

Even Republican governments have expenditures and expenses outside the military that are not "entitlements".


In general Democrats feel there should be more taxpayer funded items that the general populace should be entitled to.
We feel that healthcare is a right and that everyone should be entitled to receive at least basic healthcare.
Higher education is another. Rather than crushing student debt, all state schools would provide college education at no cost to the students.
A living wage. Congress needs to mandate that all businesses pay a minimum of $15 an hour.

You implement those three and a lot of other problems solve themselves.

But I was being facetious when I said that Democrats want to make everything an entitlement. That's more the view from the right where they don't believe the government should provide any services at all.
Except police and firefighters and soldiers.

The problem with any tax cut is that it somehow needs to be offset by spending cuts.
Or else it goes on the credit card.

I'm more in favor of tax reform which addresses actual government spending needs.

Apparently not if you run up your credit card debt and then declare bankruptcy. I think that is the basic Trump MO. Nobody told him it doesn't work for the US debt, so he's sticking with what he knows.

I do think healthcare should be an entitlement. If we had it we could save approximately 1.5 trillion dollars a year. While I do consider this to be a social right I also think that its a fiscal matter. When it comes to higher education I am not so sure. I do know that the student debt thing is an obscenity currently backed by our government, at least Obama tried to do something about it. It is interesting, however, that higher education, in other nations is free to the qualified. I have also met any number of American students in foreign places getting educationed (I don't think this is a word), doctors in Mexico, Pharmacists in Russia, etc.

The 15.00 mandate, where passed had a bunch of effects and not all of them were good. That being said it seems fair to me, especially when you are talking about places like McDonalds which are pure cash cows.

Conservatives don't like entitlements because they actually think that it takes away the right of individuals to do the right thing and take care of themselves. I have actually heard them say that if people don't do that, and die, its all their fault. When hearing this I didn't even know how to respond.

Anyway................

Even if some balk at free higher education, we could probably pass some kind of program where you trade state college grants for service for a number of years. We do that in some states for teachers, nurses, etc. The military does it for doctors. There is no reason we could not expand it massively. Any skill useful to the country or the state, could qualify. Even soft stuff like "music teacher". Everybody gets free college if they then spend four years (or whatever) working in that capacity for the government.

So many other countries already do this as a given, I don't get why we didn't start doing this a long time ago.
We simply must be willing to invest in our future.

I think there can be no argument that a healthier, better educated, better paid population is a plus from every direction you look at it.

There's an amazing amount of boards of directors, shareholders and hedge fund managers that have disagreed with that notion for decades now Gregor. They also donate generously to BOTH parties.