[DEBATE] Presidential Election - 2016 (closing Nov 22)

I'd love to point out that the Scandinavian countries are the happiest, most productive, and most livable countries on earth due to their high taxes, cheap healthcare, and free college. I'd love to point this out but I know you won't listen.

As you say, Social Security is definitely the devil's work. Every morning I wake up and think "shucks, I wish my grandparents were slowly starving in a terrible home because they lived off teacher's wages their whole lives and couldn't afford a full retirement fund." Sure, they could have invested but that tends to be a huge gamble and more likely than not they would've just ended with with no real change either way.

I also seem to recall your darling Ted Cruz trying to sign up for Obamacare when it became convenient for him...

https://www.google.com/search?q=average teachers salary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
again google is your friend
http://www.nea.org/home/2012-2013-average-starting-teacher-salary.html

He didn't even make a reply to this bit, so your 'you won't listen' part rings true.

www.google.com. Type in Average teacher salary.

1. 
   
   $47,032
   
2. 
   Average Salary for All K-12 Teachers

This number is livable for one person... barely. After taxes this comes to about 35k/year for your average single person. Once married you get a tax break and that comes to 40k/year. This is BARELY a livable wage.

Defense is 17% and 3rd for the year 2014. The point is that we spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. The world sees us as warmongers and I am inclined to agree. I take it a good Christian as yourself is more willing to spend your money on tools of destruction, used too often to kill innocent children, then for taking care of the health of our citizens? I believe Christ would care more for the least among us than the creation of weapons to kill eachother. Don't you agree?

As far as the size of the government I'm sure big business agrees with you. And republicans agree, including the elimination of the EPA. So business can pollute the environment unchecked. Sound like a good idea to you? Big business has no ethics. They have only one motivation, profits. It is cheaper to dump your waste into a river than to pay to have it cleaned up. That has been demonstrated a thousand times. We need the government to control business because without it they will destroy the country and cheat the individual citizen to maximize their quarterly profits and stock price.

Any decrease in pollution has been becuase business has been required to decrease it not becuase they wanted to. Republicans and big business are working together to repeal the Clean Air Act. Big businesses are whining they want to pollute more and the republicans are backing them 100%.

The EPA has proposed restictions on the pollution from coal burning power plants to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. Guess who has been fighting against that, the Republicans. Republicans care only about individuals that make over $500k a year and big business. Let me ask you, do you believe climate change is real and is to some extent caused by our buring of fossil fuels?

As far as our huge expenditures on weapons and the military. Yes, I see the rest of the world is very afraid of us. As ISIS cruises across the middle east and Russia takes what it wants from the Ukraine. Let me guess, your answer is that we go to war with them all? That worked really well in Afganistan and Iraq didn't it. It didn't work at all. Having enough bombs to blow up the world is not the answer.

I'm a fan of how most the figures posted on this page are red italics.. meaning they are "guesstimated" according to the very same site.

**edited** Here is another non-official website stating quite the opposite of what you were saying. Just because one non-government site says something, doesn't make it true. One can find anything on the internet to prove their case.

Neither. Deez Nuts for president!

not really sure why this is a bad thing..?

What I'm getting here given that you didn't mention any other factors is that the measure of a successful country is the size and scope of their military. Our overinflated military managed to screw up Iraq and Afghanistan nearly beyond repair. Western Europe spends some of the least (by percentage of GDP) on their military, but no one would deny that countries like England and Germany are world powerhouses despite the relative lack of military force.

Hear. Hear.

I'm sorry but where are you getting this information? Afghanistan was a success? CO2 is not a greenhouse gas? This is edging beyond the rabid fear mongering fox gets into and heading towards the truly scary

Yes, we should keep our troops at huge cost in Afganistan infinitum. So then it will be a success don't you know. And of course your answer is to go back to war in Iraq now against ISIS. Because we will be able to get them to act the way we want them to. We tell them the right way to think and that will work, right? It worked well in Vietnam, didn't it? Oh heck it doesn't really matter as long as we can blow the heck out of a bunch of them. So we end up killing a few thousand innocent women and children in the process, just casualties of war, can't be avoided. But after another 10 or 15 years and a few hundred thousand deaths they will see things our way. Or we'll kill them. So they better.

As far as climate change. You are a true blue republican. Every scientist is lying, it is a conspriracy by the democrats and Obama. Even George W. Bush agreed that it was real. Isn't he your hero?