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matt72582's Avatar
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I prefer not to categorize, but I guess in the U.S., I'm left by default. I use the 9 divisions... Right Wing (L, M, R), Left Wing (doesn't exist), and the middle (Social Democrats).. For those who don't live in the U.S., the Democrats are centre-right, while Republicans for the most part are right-wing.

I like to take each issue individually, as someone is always to the left or right of someone else. When it comes to foreign policy, I'm a leftist. On economic issues, I'm either a left-wing social democrat, or on the right wing of the Left wing if I had a good night's sleep.

Anti-War.. Pro-Abortion.. Anti-Religion... Pro-Universal Health Care... Anti-Crime (so I'm anti-poverty)... Pro-Environment (I don't know how this became a partisan issue, as if bad air could avoid fascists).

Trickle-Down Economics-- A rich guy pi$sing on homeless people. When asked why, he says he's keeping them warm, that he's a compassionate conservative.

For the record, there's never been capitalism or communism, most countries have a public and a private sector. The question is where does the tax money go to? U.S. - missile. Europe - social services.

If I tried to please everyone in this country, I wouldn't mind having the necessities (housing, health, education) and the rest is on your own. If you want a beer, mow someone's lawn.



If you all went and voted Green, which is pretty much where the left wing went from the early 90's, you could vote for someone who said something you believed.
I live in Bristol don't forget, the green capital of Britain, we have residents parking zones popping up in every area now without the mandate of the residents just on the dictat of a mayor that can't be dislodged. The cycle lanes will soon be bigger that the roads for cars. Nah , I need to get to work!



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European conservatives and libertarians realize that healthcare's a basic necessity and is pretty much a no-brainer, like a taxypayer funded military. Other than maybe some European skinhead party.



matt72582's Avatar
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I think we should have taxpayer funded, universal healthcare like in Australia, Britain, etc - no insurance needed, 100% coverage guaranteed - then we can move out of the feudal ages. Healthcare's a basic survival tool, not a "luxury" by any means (except in 3rd world countries) so this is a no brainier to me.

ObamaCare was just a cop-out and did exasperate the problem indeed.


Well the American far-right is more worried about paying for healthcare - about than paying trillions of tax dollars on military expenditures, or paying for the incarceration of chumps who get caught with a gram of weed, lol
Obamacare is the plan Republicans wanted since Nixon, Dole, and Romney. Universal Coverage is cheaper for everyone, benefits everyone, except the insurance industry, but I bet most of them have crappy insurance anyway... I still think the AFA is better than nothing, 133% above the poverty rate can get Medicaid now, and hopefully we keep expanding that.

Minimum wage should be $15 like it is in Australia. And those who make $15 already should get a raise too. Working 40 hours a week at minimum wage (after the war tax) isn't enough, and that's shameful for the richest country in the world. Top 400 people have more money than the bottom 170 million combined. Embarrassing.



European conservatives and libertarians realize that healthcare's a basic necessity and is pretty much a no-brainer, like a taxypayer funded military. Other than maybe some European skinhead party.
That still wouldn't make the belief "libertarian" by any common usage of the word.



matt72582's Avatar
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Today, I watched live as Dr. Stein declared her Green Party run for President. She might get 1% of the vote if she's lucky. I have to say, the best vote for me was in 2000 when I was 18, and voted for Ralph Nader. I still believe in him. That election was stolen by Bush, whose brother was in charge of Florida, and finally decided by the Supreme Court (1st President Bush's appointees).

I wish we had a Parliament, with several parties. People need to educated themselves. The mainstream news is garbage. I don't like MSNBC, who only hurt the cause by being a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. You don't have to lie to be deceptive; just leave out the facts that hurt your "team" and that "team" doesn't have to do anything for you, which is pretty much what's going on.



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That still wouldn't make the belief "libertarian" by any common usage of the word.
Neither would be supporting a military, police, etc funded by taxpayer dollars. The "libertarian" position would be for everyone to hire their own private military contractors in the event of war, so that no one would have to pay for anyone else's defense.



I think we should have taxpayer funded, universal healthcare like in Australia, Britain, etc - no insurance needed, 100% coverage guaranteed - then we can move out of the feudal ages. Healthcare's a basic survival tool, not a "luxury" by any means (except in 3rd world countries) so this is a no brainier to me.
Somebody has gotta pay for stuff and we can't seem to come to an agreement on who that should be. We can pick on the 1%, but in the long run that just means we will all be flipping the bill. I may be able to be convinced by the right politician that that is the way to go by the way. It just hasn't happened yet because no one has been honest about it yet.
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Minimum wage should be $15 like it is in Australia. And those who make $15 already should get a raise too. Working 40 hours a week at minimum wage (after the war tax) isn't enough, and that's shameful for the richest country in the world. Top 400 people have more money than the bottom 170 million combined. Embarrassing.
Jacking minimum wage up to $15/hr sounds great in theory, but the reality is that it will only make everything we need more expensive, since it will cost manufacturers and retailers more to provide those goods and services and they'll pass that cost onto the consumers - that is assuming they don't just take their plants overseas, depriving our citizens of much needed jobs. It might also force the closure of many small businesses that cannot afford to pay such high wages, thus taking away even more jobs.

I'm not sure there's any way to actually make minimum wage a living wage, as great as it would be were it possible.



Neither would be supporting a military, police, etc funded by taxpayer dollars. The "libertarian" position would be for everyone to hire their own private military contractors in the event of war, so that no one would have to pay for anyone else's defense.
Nope. I said "common usage." Common usage of the word almost always encompasses a narrow range of social services, not some ideologically pure straw man that virtually no human being espouses. What it almost never encompasses is universal healthcare.

The test of a word's usage, in the end, is what people will think you mean. If you describe yourself as "libertarian" to people, almost none of them will realize you support universal healthcare. Ergo, it's probably not accurate to describe yourself that way.



Obamacare is the plan Republicans wanted since Nixon, Dole, and Romney. Universal Coverage is cheaper for everyone, benefits everyone, except the insurance industry, but I bet most of them have crappy insurance anyway... I still think the AFA is better than nothing, 133% above the poverty rate can get Medicaid now, and hopefully we keep expanding that.

Minimum wage should be $15 like it is in Australia. And those who make $15 already should get a raise too. Working 40 hours a week at minimum wage (after the war tax) isn't enough, and that's shameful for the richest country in the world. Top 400 people have more money than the bottom 170 million combined. Embarrassing.
The problem I always have with this argument is whoever is making it conveniently leaves out the fact that the bottom 160 million, or more, are living pretty damn good. The biggest problem we have here is the bottom 170 million feel entitled to live like the top 400 for no other reason than, "that's not fair". We have become a nation of six year old children.



matt72582's Avatar
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2001, 1.3 trillion tax "break" - so one of the Walton siblings gets back 3.9% back, which is an extra couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the average person gets a few hundred. They (Bush) pandered, "It's your money, spend it the way you want," - and then a few years later, "Oops, we're broke.. Let's cut everything with social in front that helps all the people."

Even those who know how the upward distribution of wealth works won't turn it down, because people are in such desperation, that $400 is needed to pay the rent NOW.... The unemployment rate is a joke. It could go down to 2% and the Democrats would rally on this unrealistic statistic. Someone who made 200,000 retires, and we create two jobs at 15,000 a year.



matt72582's Avatar
Please Quote/Tag Or I'll Miss Your Responses
Jacking minimum wage up to $15/hr sounds great in theory, but the reality is that it will only make everything we need more expensive, since it will cost manufacturers and retailers more to provide those goods and services and they'll pass that cost onto the consumers.

I'm not sure there's any way to actually make minimum wage a living wage, as great as it would be were it possible.
I wouldn't put it to $15 overnight. But actually what would happen is that people would have more money, consumption would go up, more units sold, and the difference would be made up. If you give taxes back to working and middle classes, they spend, circulation occurs, which is the only way an economy grows.



While I think liberal might've been a better choice of word than libertarian, what it means in one country and what it means in the US are often different things. Not opposite, but different.
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You increase the minimum wage, you also increase the cost of living. You also make it harder for small businesses to stay in business and thus put people's jobs at risk. It's not the answer.

Also increasing wages does not equal "giving taxes back."



I wouldn't put it to $15 overnight. But actually what would happen is that people would have more money, consumption would go up, more units sold, and the difference would be made up. If you give taxes back to working and middle classes, they spend, circulation occurs, which is the only way an economy grows.
Yeah...no. This isn't how it works at all. If it was, we could grow out economy ad infinitum by just raising the minimum wage forever.



Yeah, this all moved on very quickly. I started, made a cup of tea, came back and finished. Posted it and all hell had broken loose. I didn't know if he was an American or not, as he is then, I agree, that a better choice of word was probably a good idea.

Now I'm going back to read what's been said and probably have to come back and get something else wrong. As it'd all moved on I was going to delete the post but as you'd replied I left it.