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

I'm not getting involved in this hurricane of a debate but I'm tracking the republican race on my status if anyone just wants the numbers.

I also wish that more candidates had been considered in the Poll. I do not consider myself a member of either major party and would like to see other choices as I am unhappy, like many other people in this country, with the way many of our issues are being handled. Before elections I usually study up on the candidates and issues even if I am not familiar with them or whether they might be popular then decide and it seems like only two parties are ever presented to us by the media or thought of consequently by the voters.

I think one of the largest problems we have is that our representatives no longer represent us and instead represent power and money. Through donations and lobbying bribery is legal and most of the legislation being produced now favors and is even being written by corporations rather than being driven by the needs of our citizens.

For example, look at lobbyist funding from health care and health insurance interests before and after 2012. You will see a direct correspondence between them and Federal health care reform.

The effect this has had on me is that now I have to have health insurance. I used to be uninsured for a little over ten years and paid out of pocket for my expenses. The average I paid was about $1000 per year, which included a hospital stay that cost over $8000. I cannot find even close to as good of a deal as many people in other states do and now am paying over $6000 a year for a policy with no co-pay and the maximum deductible(about $6k per individual, 11k for a family as I recall), which means I would both pay for a hospital stay along with my premiums if I were to get really sick or hurt, but it would be limited to about 12k per year(or about 17k for the whole family).

Why? Because the people writing health care legislation are owned. Blue Cross/Blue Shield owns Michigan.

I think that if we were to adopt campaign and finance reform many things would change for the better. Politicians could actually represent us instead of their greed. I think that these sorts of problems are the cause of much of Trump's and Sanders' popularity. They are the "None of the Above" many of us have been wishing for while holding our noses and voting.

I hope I don't cause trouble by bringing up abortion again. I find it curious though. It has been a litmus test for every candidate I can remember during my lifetime. I know many people who only vote Republican for religious reasons and I understand the commitment that those people have very well. I recently spoke with my pastor who says that if it were not for the issue of abortion he would not be voting Republican, but feels he has to because they own the side of the issue he is committed to by faith.

Roe v Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973 and the power over abortion funding was given to the states. I have heard some candidates say that it is no longer a Federal issue and I mostly agree with that although I think there is plenty of room to erode and manipulate policy in favor of or against it.

The President has limited power by design. Abortion during the first trimester has been legal over forty years and I do not recall and do not expect any President to openly try to change what has already been done in either direction. If they tried they would be blocked regardless of what they tried to do. I think that if you have an interest in affecting it in either way you are better off looking closely at state candidates.

I have also seen political leaders change their positions and party affiliations. Trump is an example of this. He stated in a book in 2000 that he was pro choice and has changed his position now that he is trying for a Republican nomination. He also supported Clinton in the last election which indirectly puts him on that side of the issue as recently as 2008. Is his current position sincere? Will he change his mind again?

I think it is also important to consider other issues because we have cemented ourselves in a binary party system partially over this issue. It ties in with political reform because, if we were to vote for candidates of other parties, other candidates will adopt some of the other parties' stances and candidates and their policies would eventually become better suited to our needs.

I recall hearing people say back when Ross Perot ran for President that a vote for him would be wasted, but I and many people think that we are wasting our votes anyway on people who only pretend to represent us. I have come to believe I would rather throw my vote away than vote against my interests.

I have been periodically taking the quiz here: https://www.isidewith.com/

It is kind of fun and it has helped me think through my opinions on many issues. If you go there and are inclined, take the time to go through all the choices where it says "Show more...". There is also a lot of other information there if you poke around a bit.

I took it last fall, about a month ago, and may once or twice again before the election. Who knows, maybe you will find that you have been voting against yourself.

I say Vermin Supreme for POTUS. I want a pony.

I love him just because he wears a boot on his head and looks like some kind of bearded hermit.

The crazy Gandalf of the POTUS race

Wouldn't this be down to them having 1 billion people in them each, though? Europe only has 1 billion people living in it (we have free universities spreading through here too so we'll see, which is amazing - too bad the UK won't have it if the Conservatives keep bribing their way through elections and the FPTP system stays in place) and the US has even less.

I do agree with you on the more education, less poverty note. Norway and Sweden have free university there, and they have very high wages and a hard-working population, and their crime rates are pretty low (the only reason why I can think of them committing crimes is to get into their prisons, which are like small apartments than traditional prisons ). I think the same happens in Germany, too. The UK has mandatory college/sixth form now, but university has to be paid for by a loan - the debt of which can be wiped off if it hasn't been paid off by something like 15 years. Less people are actually going to university though, since our employers are beginning to move away from university diplomas and such.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Can confirm, the British Empire did indeed use smallpox as a biological weapon against the native Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt

There are multiple instances where the US has tested out biological weapons on unwilling subjects from 1943 until 1975, though, so they have indeed used illnesses as weapons (not in warfare from what I can tell, though).

Well, take removing regulations on small business. You lose the government employees that enforce these regulations, decreasing government spending, and raise money off of the taxes generated by the business now that it is no longer burdened that can go to paying off the deficit. He won't totally abolish the IRS, but he will shrink it substantially with a simpler tax plan. He will cut the affordable care act, and he will hopefully cut Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he will also hopefully cut down the number of GSEs.

I agree with the bulk of what you're saying but, here are my disagreements:

• The H1B visa program provides immigrants the chance to live the "American Dream", and the people who get accepted are very smart, extremely hard working people who better the American society. These people aren't entering the states illegally, and are not stealing jobs, they're filling places that are high in demand and would possibly go unfilled.
• Free college is NOT the answer. Improving the existing education system is. People used to come out of high school with masonry skills, carpentry skills, programming skills, business skills et cetera. Now HS is geared at getting teens the best score on their ACT/SATs as possible, not providing skills they can use throughout their lifetime.
• College is expensive, but you don't have to go into debt to go to college. Many people who go to college and come out with masses of debt because they pay $60,000+ to go to school, and that's simply unneeded. If you can't afford it, don't do it. But, there are colleges like Northern State University that you can attend for well under $20,000 per year. Even if you don't (And most people don't) have 20Gs lying around, you can easily work enough to pay for your education. My dad, and his dad worked their way through college and came out with minimal debt, having not received any scholarships or financial aid. Some people may say they don't have time to work a job, or can't find one. But if you really want to find that job, and work your way through college, you can. You can always make it happen if you try hard and long enough. My dad always tells me "The path to success runs through miles of hell". So why should the hard working americans who have worked hard to send themselves to school have to pay to send people to college who are capable of sending themselves? The people we should be sending to college aren't the ones who sit around asking for free education, they're the ones out in the real world working their asses off to make it happen, and they will with or without government aid.

I found the article I read here if you want to read it. From the article: "If current trends continue, China and India will account for 40% of all young people with a tertiary education in G20 and OECD countries by the year 2020, while the United States and European Union countries will account for just over 25%."

The populations of China and India are about 1.3 and 1.2 billion respectively. The US and Europe populations combined are also a little over 1 billion.

Another article I found while looking for that one showed the number of China's and the US' 4 year graduates between 2000 and 2005 for engineering degrees. In 2000 the US had 109k and China had 213k graduates. In 2005 the US had 133k and China had 517k graduates.

I think you are correct in bringing up population since their population is roughly four times ours and their graduates in 2005 are proportional to that when compared to ours, but the 2000 figure proves that they are investing in educating their people more aggressively than we are since they doubled their graduate rate over 5 years. Keep in mind also that this data from ten years ago too. I couldn't find much from 2005 onward, but this trend has likely continued.

The concern I have is that we are employing close to 100k foreign people in technical jobs yearly already and are thinking of increasing that indefinitely. Then while our graduate level has stayed relatively stagnant, theirs has been increasing by multiples. I couldn't find more recent data, but using 2005's figure, instead of having 100k graduates we should have 200k to fill the job openings we have.

So the truth as I see it after taking population into account is not so much that they are pushing past but they that they are catching up to where we are relative to population in terms of higher education. I dislike the slogan "Make America Great Again", but not being able to fill our own needs for workers will never accomplish that.

It will take a lot more than that for small businesses to prosper on a large enough scale for that to happen. Half of the problem plaguing small businesses today is the fact that whatever it is, there is likely bigger, more efficient way to deliver that product or service. The reason I can't go around my neighborhood mowing lawns anymore is because there are guys who do it faster, better, cheaper, and I don't have the resources to compete with them.

That wasn't a very good analogy.

Say there is a local store, a small, private, locally owned store, that sells children's toys. (This is a real example from around where I live). Once they build a Walmart ten minutes away from that store, everyone just goes to the Walmart instead because it is cheaper.

The toy store was forced to sell it's trademarks and was eventually run out of business.

Also, what do you think Cruz plans to do for all of the people who will not be able to get access to quality healthcare after the ACA is repealed? I mean I have to agree with you, it's not exactly an 'innovative' piece of legislation, but that's because of the insane amount of money the health care industry poured into republicans during the drafting stage.

How do you suggest we reverse the trend society has taken and make it possible to get jobs paying livable wages with only a high school degree? I say the way to include everyone best is to provide for at the very least cheaper public schools.

If you're smart enough and a hard enough worker, don't you think you should be able to get a quality education that will land you a good job? The job market is so competitive right now that it is very hard to get a professional level job with just a community college degree.

Also, another important fact for consideration. I'm not sure how old your dad or granddad is, but I'm going to infer that at least your grandfather was in college in the 60s. If he worked his way through college — good for him. The thing is it's more than twice as hard to do that now, with the national minimum wage being less than half of what it was in 1962 proportional to inflation. When inflation is removed as a factor, you see both the price of college increasing and the minimum wage decreasing. So good luck trying to work your way through college and come out with no debt.

The thing is, people need to go to good schools to get good jobs at this point, if you don't, you very well may spend a decade out of college working at McDonald's waiting for a spot in your field to open up.

While it's definitely true that 'The path to success runs through miles of hell,' it is not true that you can just work hard and expect for things to come out okay eventually. There are plenty of people that work amazingly hard their entire lives at something and don't achieve it. If I had an IQ of 75, even if I work harder than all the other students in my class combined, I'm not going to get into Harvard law school.

And I promise you, there are plenty of people 'working their asses off' who will never make it happen. It's how the free market economy works, eat or be eaten. If your teeth aren't sharp enough, too bad for you.

That's not how a morally correct society should work.

America, or at least an ideal America in the eyes of the people, is built on equal chances for all and the ability to succeed if you work hard, not if your parents are well-off. So we need to fix it, it's broken.

First I appreciate you snipping my long post. Second I appreciate that you tok the time to read it. I like to discuss and think about these sort of things and I wanted to try and contribute to the discussion above a FB cartoon level if I was going to at all, but it's also kind of draining so I'll probably sit back and watch after this post. Here are a few points that came to mind as I read yours.

- Where will all the laid off government employees find work?

- Companies who are given tax breaks tend to take advantage of them but I don't hear a lot about that trickling down to their workers. Income is stagnant, unless you consider the ones who get the jobs that are moved overseas.

- How do we tax a corporation when it hides its income in Ireland?

- I had a friend post about the flat tax on FB. His comment used an example of someone making a million dollars and paying a progressive tax of 60% or a 10% flat tax as I recall. I used to be in favor of this when I was younger mainly because it seemed fair. Currently I like that it would allow people with complicated returns to do their own taxes and have fewer loopholes(but if they are there they will be found and used).

A lot of people could be out of jobs with a flat tax and to tie in with finance reform, I have to wonder if enough money will be thrown at enough politicians to keep it from happening. If it does I wouldn't count on paying taxes as simple as myincome * .1 = mytax if it ever makes it into law.

When I calculated it, I think the change my friend brought up would mean around 5k a year reduction to me. That is part of my wife's or my 6.5k annual IRA contribution or most of my health insurance. During lean years I have skipped her contribution so it would make a difference but not a significant change. My friend's example 1 million dollar income would make a difference between a net 400k or 900k after tax. I'm not surprised that someone who comes from a wealthy background would support that as it favors them.

I think one problem with a flat tax comes when you scale income up or down. The cost of a loaf of bread is the same for me, a person who makes a million dollars a year, and for someone making less than average income. But the person making a lot of money could pay a high percentage of their income in tax and still live very well, myself likely also, but as income goes down, smaller amounts of money make a larger difference.

Also, I can make the money I do because I can drive to work on roads taxes pay for, went to a pubic school, have police and fire protection, water, ... It could be argued that I receive a greater benefit from those services than someone who earns less than I, and less benefit than a person making more than I. It wouldn't take much less income for me to have to start choosing between an IRA or not. Someone making less may have to decide between eating and gas for the month, but someone making more maybe might have to stop wiping their ass with $100 bills and switch to $50's during hard times.

Someone making a million dollars a year and being taxed 60% is still taking home a shitload of money. I am currently self-employed but have earned a little over the national average since the early 90's. I live pretty frugally. I don't take many vacations or buy a lot of toys, I don't go out much or have cable, but I have paid off my mortgage, own my cars, and live pretty comfortably.

I know income disparity is sort of a bad word in some circles, but most people are fooling themselves if they think they will ever make much more than average. I've perhaps made a million dollars in my lifetime, but I have no idea what I would do with more than 200k a year, much less 400k which is the net after the "bad" tax that my friend referred to. A lot of us consider gluttony a sin, but only in terms of food. I was taught and believe that excess is wrong as hoarding resources denies those resources from others. After a certain point the money is not doing anything for you except making more money regardless of your lifestyle.

There are people in this country who make so much money I have seen charts where you can't plot it all together because either the low end is too small to see or the high end is too large to fit on a page. And those guys at the high end are manipulating our government to make that difference even greater. So you have guys like Romney, who as I recall during last election paid a lower effective tax rate than I did, yet got there partially because taxpayers like myself paid him along with buying ketchup and mustard from his wife(along with some money bags from companies like Blue Cross). But I already posted earlier about that.

- The H1B program is filling a shortfall in eligible workers in our country. We could be filling those positions but are not and are letting other, more ambitious countries do so by default.

- We currently receive a free education, but in today's world and unless you are Amish it is not enough. The skills you list all will require additional training sooner or later through college, licencing, or certificate programs. Again, the days when a guy could go out and support a family turning bolts at Ford are long gone. It's not free college, it's free education.

My local community college has programs that kids can start while still in high school. CNC, for example, but some might take more traditional classes like English so they do not have to later on in a degree program. What I am advocating is to continue what we are already doing with K-12 and with programs like this which are intended to prepare our young people for employment, and also extending it beyond high school to compensate for the change in the level of education and training that is needed now for many jobs.

- I graduated from college in 1992. I worked my way through school because I did not want to burden my parents. It took me about 12 years, taking classes when I had saved the money. When I graduated I initially doubled my income then soon more than tripled it. If I had graduated after 4 years I would have been paying taxes on a much higher wage for those 8 years I had been working my way through.

Part of that time I spent working for minimum which was $3.35 at the time, living with my parents, and supporting a car and so forth. Later on I got a co-op job and was making $7 something but also had gotten married. I don't recall what tuition was exactly then, but I recall near the end of my program, my co-op boss wanted to hire me full time and was encouraging me to hurry up so I took out loans which covered my tuition for the last year and had a little extra for expenses, like books. They totaled $4000 as I recall.

I checked UofM's website tonight and a semester in their engineering program would cost over 14k now not including books or other materials which have also gone up substantially. Minimum wage in my state is currently 8.50 so in the same time that college costs have gone up 4-500 percent, minimum wage has a little more than doubled(8.50/3.35=2.5).

Here is a link to an article comparing the number of hours you would have to work to pay for college at minimum wage between 1970 and 2010 in a chart partway down. Around 1990 they have 500 hours, which works out to about 9 hours a week. In 2005 and beyond it climbs over twice that, closer to 20 hours a week. If you don't like the source, I am sure you can find other links pretty easily.

If I were taking classes and working in the same place it would take me 24 years to do the same thing I did in the 80's according to this data. I was working full time and going to school part time as I also had transportation and other things to pay for. Nowadays a young person is doing well to find a job where they can work that many hours since many employers avoid full time workers in order to avoid paying benefits.

I think part of the reason for the increase in college is all the foreign students. Universities make a lot more money off of them and they recruit pretty aggressively. The other part is that lower income people get assistance. The result is that the costs have gone up unchecked because classes are full and the schools are being paid giving schools no reason to lower prices. People with high income and low income can go, but the people in the middle can't afford to go without going into debt.

Sorry. ACA wouldn't fit:

- Regarding ACA, I don't think it goes far enough. When I was searching for insurance in 2013, I found that it would cost me about $6000 to get a max deductible, no co pay policy through Blue Cross Blue Shield. The next level up with a 3k deductible and co-pay would have cost me more than 12k a year. I was checking around and found that a State of Michigan employee could get the same 12k policy for about $400 a month. Generally, if you work for a large company, you can get a deal like this because insurance companies discount their bulk policies and make up the difference with people like myself.

The government is the largest employer on earth not even counting the military or state/local governments and I am paying for their employees' health care twice: once through taxes and a second time through higher premiums which the government mandates that I pay through policies that the health care industry has been instrumental in setting up.

So people with high incomes and/or jobs at large companies as well as poor people all have nice insurance but everyone else: young people, people with marginal incomes, or who are employed with small companies or working for a large one but not receiving enough time to be qualified, get to pay up the wazoo for themselves and everyone else or go without and take their chances with getting really sick or hurt. It amounts to welfare in my opinion.

When I was paying out of pocket I was excited when I got a discount for paying cash, but the reality I have since learned is that providers increase the price to make up for the prices that insurance companies pay, so the "discount" is actually more like the real price.

On the other hand if something really bad happens the most I will have to pay is about 12k a year. Unfortunately, I may not be able to afford my premiums then, but at least I will have a chance. The alternative without it is to stiff the hospital or go so deeply into debt you regret living. An accident could easily set you up with that sort of debt load for life too.

The health care industry is really the blame for the prices of insurance. Actually it is a little circular, since so many people having insurance and not having to approve health care as a purchase allows the costs to go unchecked. Other than base costs I feel insurance is misused in cases where we could pay out of pocket, like doctor visits, tests, and many medicines, and really should only be used for catastrophes like we use house insurance for. Instead we use it like a lay away plan. Paying in when we are young and withdrawing when we get old. What really needs to be dealt with somehow are the costs the insurance covers which may never be addressed especially if ACA is undone.

ACA as it is currently and the way health care was before isn't/wasn't working for everyone. I think it needs to be built into something that works for all of us rather than thrown out the window.

Trump and Clinton are both on a boat, and the boat capsizes, both of them start to drown.
Who will survive?

America.

I saw this on Facebook

We'll see who wins. Does it matter? Congress has all the real power. We do need a figure head that can get along with other country's though.

The President has a significant amount of power. Any of these candidates can make major changes to the country.