[Tainari88]

We are all burdened, @Tainari88. All the things you mention cost money, and that means the taxpayer foots the bill.

I also don't expect the US taxpayer to pay for my student debt, since I did not take the loan in the US. That is definitely not fair for the US taxpayer given the US taxpayer would not have access to the Chilean banking system to take student loans.

For the other things you mentioned? I'm open for discussion, but at least my personal student loan situation shouldn't be the business of the US taxpayer and I'm OK with that. Not that it's a big deal, I'll be done 3 years from now.

Do you know how much money is wasted in Washington DC? On sheer crap? War? Overblown sweetheart deals and total waste of the worst sort?

It is enormous. Food waste, all kinds of waste. There are thousands of great and cost effective solutions but the people controlling those decisions REFUSE to do it. Lack of political will and a kind of insanity keeping from doing it.

The entire thing is a total and complete waste.

War is the worst of it. Really. Present debt due to war:

About 128,000,000 results (0.34 seconds)
And while the U.S. paid for past wars by raising taxes and selling war bonds, the current wars have been paid for almost entirely with borrowed money, on which interest has to be paid. Through FY2022, the U.S. government owes over $1 trillion in interest on these wars.

US Federal Budget | Costs of War

Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

Do you know how many student loans could be forgiven? Money found for free university degrees for the kids who are willing to do it? And the amount of green energy recycled modern homes and condos you can build with that kind of DOUGH? And the parks, and the overworked people making shit salaries that can get out of poverty? And the amount of urban gardens, rec centers, and overhaul of everything in the USA that is decaying?

If I was taxed a lot and I knew a bunch of young people could study and work and have a decent life because my tax money was being used wisely I would not mind paying at all.

Hell, I love paying my tax bill in Mexico right now!!! They charge me a lot less than the USA and they use it well. In this city, you see the results everywhere and they put the big billboard with a breakdown of where the money went and how....this city is run well. I love paying my damn taxes in Merida. YEAH. It is not going to build a bomb. It goes to Christmas lights, pretty parks, fountains, road repair, street lights, new parks with new playgrounds, enormous sports rec centers, botanical gardens, train stations and museums, free tuition for the UADY, and free public schools for the kids. I do not mind that cost at all!

I mind that nasty killing and waste and pork from DC. That I MIND: Because they charge the least who can pay it and let the ones on top get away with MURDER. As Warren Buffett stated. They charge him almost nothing and his secretary in comparison gets a huge burden of the tax burden.

It is a very ugly tax system.

Mexico was about the elite never paying. They are in the hot seat now. Angry as hell they are with ridiculous fucking claims on the radio about how students have to be left with no money because they become lazy and poor do not need to study and the poor gotta be working till they die because they do not know how to administer real money like the rich....fucking IDIOTS on the radio and none of them are ever thinking how bad they sound on those talk shows! Saying things like, ´Los ancianos no necesitan una pensión. Son viejos que las familias costean su vejez. No los contribuyentes. Si su familiar es muy pobre no es problema mío. Yo si puedo ayudar a mi abuela.¨ The Mexicans of lower class status just say to them, I am not voting for your stupid party that never cares about us. It is not worth it. They moan about losing. Do they have no idea how bad they sound?

[Puffer Fish]

No one lent him $250k, 250 is the size of the debt after 25 years of compound interest.

Nevertheless, there is a cost to borrowing money.

We all know the government doesn't actually have the money, so had to borrow it and pay an interest rate on it.

[Puffer Fish]

And the parks, and the overworked people making shit salaries that can get out of poverty? And the amount of urban gardens, rec centers, and overhaul of everything in the USA that is decaying?

If I was taxed a lot and I knew a bunch of young people could study and work and have a decent life because my tax money was being used wisely I would not mind paying at all.

That is assuming that this college education is actually an economic investment for the country.

In this individual case, it seems obvious that it was actually not.

And before you give the trite old platitude that "college education increases one's earning potential", we want to be sure that college education actually allows them to economically contribute more in some way, rather than just being given the better job over another candidate who does not have that degree.
(That would be credentialism. And just because something might benefit one person does not mean that same thing would benefit the collective. Look up the "Fallacy of Composition")

[Tainari88]

That is assuming that this college education is actually an economic investment for the country.

In this individual case, it seems obvious that it was actually not.

And before you give the trite old platitude that "college education increases one's earning potential", we want to be sure that college education actually allows them to economically contribute more in some way, rather than just being given the better job over another candidate who does not have that degree.
(That would be credentialism. And just because something might benefit one person does not mean that same thing would benefit the collective. Look up the "Fallacy of Composition")

The reality is that not educating people and not investing in having them obtain a decent and appropriate education is the key to why societies do not progress Puffer Fish. Do you want human society to get better over time, have more options, develop sustainably, have better health outcomes, have less violence, and less negative outcomes? You have to invest in education as a whole.

It has to be an appropriate education and a high-quality education. the amount of waste involved in spending on a lot of war machinery, and wasting a lot of money on fluff and crap that does not contribute to the overall good of society is the problem: wasted food, wasted resources, wasted time, and wasted MINDS. Human minds are wasted in the present system by the tonnage.

If you invest in the development of all human minds capable of thinking and being creative? You progress society by leaps and bounds. The USA really lept forward when it started investing in public education in the 19th century. Before that? Most of the world was illiterate and always had been. Without being able to read and write and preserve our ability to communicate with each other through the written word? The society would still be in an oral tradition and without much progress in terms of technology and science, the arts, and governmental structural projects. All of that would be impossible.

You keep hogging who has access and who can PAY and who can not? And is it some restricted access deal for the majority of humanity? You are choking the entire society of its potential. It's human potential.

It is obvious. But if you are some person, who only thinks poor people do not have the right to a quality education because society has to pay for it and I am rich and can pay my way and they can't and who gives a fuck about poor people? You are part of the problem right there.

[Rancid]

Education, no matter what type of education should be free for all.

[Tainari88]

Education, no matter what type of education should be free for all.

Health care and education should be free for all. It is not a for-profit model in general.

I also think housing has to be sliding scale or something doable. Having people pooping and peeing in the streets and mental cases without a place to sleep and cook a meal or be supervised by licensed people paid for by the state to treat them and help them out is also ridiculous and a waste of human potential.

[Rancid]

Health care and education should be free for all. It is not a for-profit model in general.

100%

Education, healthcare, and housing should not be treated as free market products. Shit like TVs, cell phones, and whatever else are totally fine to be governed by free market forces.

All of this can easily be funded if we tax corporations and the megarich. They should be paying what they owe.

[Istanbuller]

100%

Education, healthcare, and housing should not be treated as free market products. Shit like TVs, cell phones, and whatever else are totally fine to be governed by free market forces.

All of this can easily be funded if we tax corporations and the megarich. They should be paying what they owe.

It is a good wish but it is not possible. Probably lack of understanding economics prevents people from realizing its not possibility. There is no such thing as free education, housing, healthcare, let alone free lunch. Someone or someones pay for price.

You can't fund it by taxing corporations more. Corportrations would just switch their operations to another country and that can result decreases in government's tax revenue.

[Tainari88]

It is a good wish but it is not possible. Probably lack of understanding economics prevents people from realizing its not possibility. There is no such thing as free education, housing, healthcare, let alone free lunch. Someone or someones pay for price.

You can't fund it by taxing corporations more. Corporations would just switch their operations to another country and that can result decreases in government's tax revenue.

Instabuller NOTHING in life is FREE. We are talking about market socialism. What does that mean? It means that you use publicly gathered tax funds to fund what departments in government make sense to be a not-for-profit model. And the rest of the parts of a free market economy are to be left to that.

Nothing is for free. Communists know this and so do socialists. You are the one who thinks free is no one pays taxes or gives off their labor to contribute to society and a bunch of lazy people do nothing all day expecting to be waited on hand and foot. That is not what socialism is about.

You need to read more about how government and economies work in real life. Not fantasies.

You take the most primitive society on the planet. Let us say hunter-gatherers and people who forage land. There does not exist private property concepts and boundaries and nation-states back then. It was simply humans having to live off the land and no way of growing food consistently. You lived off what was available and when the resources in that land were low or did not exist anymore you MOVED to a land that did still have resources, you swung back around when Spring arrived and you could gather berries and leaves and grain from the wild sources and fish and hunt. It was like that for hundreds of thousands of years. How did those people LIVE? Scratching their belly buttons and their asses waiting for a handout from the SKY? NO.

People had to spend time walking around and looking for food that was easy to catch like grubs, ants, and high protein bugs that were edible, and fruit and veggies pulled from the ground and from nearby rivers and streams. They hauled water all day and drank and cooked with it. They had to hunt animals with stone flaked tools by hand, and make fur coats out of their hunted animals to not waste the hides and make it useful. No such thing in those societies as let me sit on my ass and wait for a freebie.

What we are talking about are having societies that are modern, efficient and have a lot of surplus accumulated value to cover everyone's needs. If you have a fair tax system and a non-corrupt government doing its job. That is what Rancid and I are talking about.

Most governments in the world have some corruption in the system in varying degrees. The ideal is to have very low corruption like Finland or Norway does.

What you need to have is using the taxes collected from millions of people wisely. Everyone has to work during the ages of 18-70 years old in most nations on Earth. That is a long time. About 52 years of getting up everyday and working and paying taxes. Each person contributes at least 25% of their salaries to paying SS tax, medicare tax, and city and state and county taxes. It should be enough for that person to retire comfortable and be able to save 10% of their entire earnings over 50 years. You multiply that by millions upon millions of people and you tax corporations like individuals? Forget about it. You got enough cash galore forever. If you tell the Fed Reserve that no interest will be paid back and it will be strictly what the original loan amount was about. You get rid of the bloated shitty interests that the banks use privately to control the entire world and hold them hostage to capitalism and pollution abilities.

You fix a lot of issues with that alone.

But you can't do it with again people thinking socialism is pie-in-the-sky shit for free and handouts when it is not. It has been hard work for 50 years from millions of humans. All pooled together that creates tremendous amounts of wealth. You add AI and the ability to farm out low-paying, and unskilled work that is drudgery work to robots and AI? You free up a lot of labor surplus to get even more money for great education health and housing for all. It is very doable.

Again, without the people who HATE others and think health and education have to be private and exclusive only for the wealthy and the powerful. It kills the entire society. Guaranteed.

But again, I am sick of dealing with the conservative people who do not know shit about history, economics, or anything else and are selfish people filled with fear of the poor getting a decent education because it might mean their kids losing privileges. People like that are the problem. Always.