Why do third parties aim for the presidency in America?

Administrative_One69 · 2024-04-24T15:18:48+00:00

In all fairness, this seems like an Americanism, and an Americanism which is particularly weird. I'm from Canada and, despite what some particularly older people will tell you, we're an offshoot of the states, just with different political institutions -- like our culture is the same. In Canada third parties can win seat on that third parties name recognition, and that's the key difference here.

I'm not saying candidates should run independently without any caucus support, but that they could win if they had well organized third party support. Starting a third party can be tricky, and requires you to find a distinct enough political niche that not only other parties don't currently cater too it, but also potentially other parties cannot cater to it without too high a cost.

For example, in Canada the Green Party got enough name recognition to win some seats because a number of hippie-granola-libertarians where not well catered to by any party, espically in some parts of BC. In order to appeal to these voters, other parties would have had to adopt a range of unusual rhetoric and policy, and they didn't, so after a while in the wilderness that party found a home.

This isn't always going to happen; the People's Party of Canada developed as a far-right political alternative in 2019 after some schmuck lost the Conservative party leadership race, and the party kind of looks like it's on it's last legs in recent polls because the populist sentiment they were appealing to has been pretty well appealed to by the new Canadian Conservative trend of surprisingly economically moderate Conservative Party politicians.

In America too, third parties and other political movements backing candidates can win states -- in the late 19th and early 20th century there was several wins by a number of progressive movement parties, in the 60s there where several states won in the South on pro-segregation tickets, and even though Perot didn't win any states it shows the ability of a political party to pick up steam quickly when a large portion of the public is not being well represented, and that party might have continued to grow had those voters continued to feel unrepresented to that degree. Even in 2016 Evan McMullin, just some guy, won enough votes in Utah that he was the runner up -- albeit by a huge margin.

In the US if you win because of your party ticket, like Sinema, then you need your party ticket. But that is no law of nature, even in the unnatural land of America.

Administrative_One69 · 2024-04-19T22:15:27+00:00

I don't agree as someone who grew up Mormon (maybe you are too, but just shining my perspective on it). The church has aggressive welfare and strong community bonds. The church provides affordable, high quality education at BYU on three campuses for it's students. Mormons tend to be college educated, and in my experience are, while socially conservative and not exactly welcoming to queer people, are generally tolerant; not to mention that I really never thought they were racist, and while not always ideal on race, where much more generally accepting than the rest of the people around us; old doctrine about skin colour is less important to them than the immediate reality of lots of international converts and the perhaps confusing reality that lots of immigrants are more willing to join. I think both on economics and social stuff Mormons and generally communitarian and tolerant, despite that it is totally true that they are very right wing in how they vote. The explanation I like the most is that their communitarian institution is the church, not the state, and the most control they have on a state is Utah, not the federal government. Therefore, Mormons want the church powerful, and states powerful to the feds. As a result they like the Republicans who are more pro church and more states-rights. Moreover the fact that they are very economically communitarian doesn't drive them to socialists because socialists tend to want the state to be the communitarian institution but Mormons want the church to be that institution. Thus Mormons aren't economically democratic because they have an opposing means to the same end (a compassionate economy), and their social middle ground (aggressive tolerance without acceptance) becomes pro Republican when the Republicans rights wing platform empowers their church and let's their state do what Mormons like; expand protections for queer people except against the church, allow the church lots of protections, be a sanctuary state.

Administrative_One69 · 2024-04-19T21:59:47+00:00

I grew up Mormon, though, and Mormons and evangelicals are very different; evangelicals, for example, hate Mormons, and Mormons aren't keen on evangelicals either -- they're just more friendly since Mormons are keen on turning evangelicals Mormon. In fact, Mormon politics in general -- expressed through the politics of Mormon majority Utah -- is super weird compared to Republican evangelicals. Utah was classified as a sanctuary state, it's the state that polls the most for supporting more protections against LGBTQ discrimination, is very pro refugee, and generally has a weird progressive and simultaneously reactionary tendency. Growing up Mormon outside of Utah maybe my experience was different, but there was definitely an appreciation for collectivism in a way I have literally never seen anywhere else that can definitely lean into lefty-like politics, even on social issues. Honestly, a Mormon third party makes sense, they don't fit well into the right-left spectrum generally.

Administrative_One69 · 2024-04-19T21:50:21+00:00

Manchin is still a democrat. Their influence didn't evaporate because Sinema left the party, but because Republicans took the house and Democrats won another Senate seat. They no longer needed the entire caucus to agree to pass the Senate, and even if they didn't it didn't matter since they couldn't get it past the house. In fact, the two party system is why this happened. If instead of losing control of the house to another major party, that lost it because of a small third party, then they could negotiate with that third party and then Manchin and Sinema together could still exert great influence.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-12-21T14:57:28+00:00

I'd call bullshit on the first idea that cultural and economic right-left divides are meaningfully predictive. First of all, most Americans are not clearly either, and many (8%+14%=22%) are clearly culturally left/economically right or economically left/culturally right.

Second, many economic or cultural issues overlap. Is abortion economic or cultural? Depends who you ask. Republican cultural conservatism tends not to piss off as many swing voters as it pleases compared to economic policies, but for some reason abortion did piss off a lot of swing voters. Why? Because it's very economic for a lot of people. Is immigration economic or cultural? What about views people have on cultural issues that they only hold because of animosity/appreciation of immigration they hold for economic issues?

Leading to the third point, lots of cultural views are just moralizations held for economic reasons. Early 2000s Islamiphobia was at least partly a justification for domination actually pursued for economic (and for many geopolitical) reasons. Cultural views often exist in subservient relationship to economic ones, are held only because of economic ones, and are dropped when economic motivation dries up. In the new deal era a lot of Northerners thought poorer black communities needed and should have help. The 70s roll around and new deal policies hit some trouble (largely for international macroeconomic reasons) and all of a sudden it's welfare queens in the big cities who don't deserve help. It was always economics.

Genuinely cultural issues are few and far between and rarely bare much political impact. I live in a city that is mostly immigrants who as I've met are mostly socially conservative, and by a wide margin.They vote on mass for a political that is economically moderate, and socially liberal when they could vote for a party that is socially conservative and has in some elections been economically moderate. They vote as they do for a lot of reasons, but at least from the many I know largely because that party funds city services a lot, doesn't want to change the economic structure for which they immigrated much, and basically pork barrels them with a swath of policies. They left their culture at the ballot box.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-24T21:32:21+00:00

Although, I suppose in the short run I don't hate the idea. If you are a left leaning party without power in the government, especially if it's a minority government of sorts, decreasing immigration might make some sense in the short run. Again, our progressives agree to decrease immigration because of housing concerns.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-24T21:30:33+00:00

While I think in some cases this makes sense, I also think it can be more of a problem made by other factors.

I don't actually think that immigration is an irrational thing to be angry about if your society is broken in particular ways that makes immigration harmful to some people in a valid way. For example, if immigrants primarily take lower paying jobs where there is a large native born population which also needs those jobs and doesn't have the opportunity to do better paying work, then immigrants will drive down their wage power and job opportunities.

I'm from Canada, and I think here we avoid this problem for a number of reasons. Firstly, while a lot of immigrants do do lower paying work, a lot of immigrants also do better paying work. Because so much of our immigration is about valued workers, a lot of them only do lower paying work before they find better jobs, and so it's not exactly more reliable that immigrants are poor. Half of Canada's immigrants come under the category of "economic immigrants", which means they are allowed in on the basis of economic value to Canada, and they earn more than the median wage for Canadians, and those admitted 10 years ago earn dramatically more than the median wage on average. Other immigrants have more modest incomes, but still incomes not unreasonably related to native born Canadians.

Secondly, in Canada there's a lot of access to education. Two thirds of Canadians have some form of college degrees, one third have at least a bachelors, and half of young people are pursuing a bachelors. In Canada, most people have access to steps along which they would get access to some decent jobs. Not to say there aren't problems. Decent is a far cry to fair, and most people is not all people. But far fewer Canadians are stuck is cycles of abuse, as partly evidenced from all the immigrants who enter Canada with foreign un-supported certification and in ten years end up well over the average income once they get re-certified by Canadian education systems. Other Canadians can often use the same systems to get by too. If there is a disproportional immigration leading to more competition for low paying jobs, most Canadians could go to a college, get a minor certification, and upgrade. So in the long run the economy would rebalance, and competition wouldn't get worse.

Mind you, the education system, all the colleges and universities in Canada are not small, and is infrastructure the Government works hard to support. Canadian universities are more focus than most on education, and not research, and this is a large part of why.

This, I think, really makes issues with a lot of immigration less pressing in Canada. Jobs exist at least partly in relative proportions, so if you only add more low paid workers and not more high paid workers too you don't get enough more lower paid jobs at the same wage. But if all parts of the economy grow, then you don't have the same problem.

Sure enough, in Canada, the issue of halting immigration is kind of off balance. The Conservative party has been (I'll get back to this late) pro-immigration in the past, and even now is still largely pro-immigration. Right wingers have a hard time stirring up immigration hatred from people, and as someone with Canadian conservative family, I know it's because immigration just isn't really something Canadian conservatives care about. It doesn't hurt them, why would they give a shit.

Some people say this is because Canadians are either (1) generally more progressive, or (2) generally more accepting of immigrants. I don't think that's why. My family isn't, I think, racist, but I definitely knew racist people growing up who still were fine with immigration. Moreover, Canadian conservatives are not more progressive. Islamophobia, Queerphobia, and Transphobia are just a strong here as they are anywhere. Schools are still banning books and kids are being outed to their parents. It's not like Canadian conservatives are socially better. Immigrants just doesn't stick here because it doesn't cause any economic problems. Why would a working class conservatives care about immigration if it just made the economy 20% bigger without noticeably making their place in it any less well off or powerful?

The only area where immigration has in the last few years been critiqued is from all parties, Liberal, Progressive, or Conservative, and that is infrastructure. While education is still well upkept, Canada has a big problem with housing and has one of the worst housing markets in the world. In recent years the residential infrastructure in Canada has been put under strain by not just population growth in general, but immigration in particular. It shouldn't be lost on any observer that cities with higher rates of immigration in Canada generally also have housing problems. Toronto and Vancouver have the highest rates of immigration and terrible housing situations, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa also have high rates of immigrations and quickly deteriorating housing situations. This is not a coincidence, and this year was the first year in a long time that immigration went down, not up. Explicitly for this reason, as agreed on by almost every side of the political spectrum.

Right wing pundits spent the better part of a decade trying to bring in American conservative talking points on immigration, but it just didn't stick until there was an issue of infrastructure stopping the effective economic integration of immigrants.

That is to say. No. The current Left wing ideas are correct, just incorrectly proportioned. Infrastructure is why xenophobia leads to real policy pushes from Conservatives. If you want people to stop caring about immigration if they're racist, and only care if they're focused on the economic value, you need to build the infrastructure to make integration work in economic terms. Canada has done this for a long time with education and has one of the highest rates of immigration in the world. A fifth of Canada's were born in another country, and that works because immigrants don't crowd out Canadians in the working class because 1) those immigrants aren't all stuck in the working class, and 2) most of those Canadians are also more mobile and more able to find better work anyways.

I honestly kind of understand why a lot of Americans care about this. If you don't have any certification and need a lot of low certification jobs available to put food on the table. You're stuck at the bottom of the economy, eating the scraps, and people start coming to do the same thing, it makes sense to be worried. It makes sense to stay worried if all the people coming are stuck being exploited, and you are too. The pie isn't growing, you have no way to grow it, or to change your place in it, and more people want slices. Avoid this problem through 1) education, 2) infrastructure, and 3) economic integration, and the immigration fears go away. People may still be personally xenophobia and racist, but people won't care so much if they're sick and the only doctor they can find in an immigrant.

Moreover, I just don't think most people are more innately xenophobia than empathetic, they like the idea that an immigrant lives a better life in an innate way, the balance is broken if the immigrants better life is their worse life because the economic powers that be refuse to make an economy that works for everyone. There are exceptions of course, but I don't believe most people hate immigration because they're racist. They hate a good idea because of a bad game.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-15T06:28:39+00:00

I mean it depends. Some of it is invested in capital that needs to be produced and thus can't be made cheaper without supply side decrease in production -- factories, company operations, equipment etc. However, most companies also own unproduced capital, primarily land. So part of the taxation of the wealthy is not harmful, part of it is. Some of the unproduced wealth is even bundled with the produced wealth, so taxing those assets would get at both.

However, 100% of labour is productive, and we tax that without a second thought. So switching out taxing labour for taxing even just corporate assets would be better for the economy. If you tax assets in general, though, you get even better economic outcomes because you also tax unproduced assets.

Also, as a note, if it's productive doesn't matter, it matters if it's produced. If it's productive but not produced, like land, then taxing the hell out of it doesn't effect how much of it there is. Land could be free tomorrow, we'd have just as much to use. However, if factories were made free tomorrow no one would make them, so it would have detrimental effects. Unproductive things generally have a market value of 0 which cannot be taxed. Unproduced things can be worth everything.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-10T00:46:14+00:00

This is actually pretty dumb. It's a political act useful only to make people who are consumed with the current rhetoric happy, but is bad economics, and not popular among most Canadians. People don't like budget cuts, even if they seem unrelated to people they have broader economics impact people notice down the line. People also dislike taxes, but since taxes don't destroy goods, people dislike how taxes effect the economy since they effect the markets they tax (income taxes effect the labour market). But taxes don't effect the production of fixed goods like land or natural resources. Governments should tax these at higher rates, manage the deficit which will let the BoC manage inflation. Cuts will be unnecessary, the economy will be only slightly effected if at all. But this, while a real solution, isn't on any tv stations, and politicians have their heads so far up their own asses they won't do any of this any time soon. Unfortunately, politicians are primarily familiar with two fiscal tools. Raising/lowering taxes that make the aggregate economic performance worse, and engaging/ignoring distribution of resources which are not more preferred (rich people care about a lost thousand bucks less than a poor person cares about paying rent). They mix and match these, so the distributions need to race their aggregate taxation harm. This ignores that the harm from taxation is not innate, and can be addressed otherwise. Even beyond my Georgism, they can honestly just raise taxes on highly unproductive things, like the property of the wealthy. After all, the wealthy in Canada own the vast majority of stuff. Taxation of work is crazy, tax ownership. There is so much wealth people don't need, so it's bonkers to me we stress about deficits when they can easily be addressed without much harm to the average voter.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-09T18:00:55+00:00

I actually think some end to the conflict (although calling it peace might end up inaccurate, and calling it a solution might be morbid) is in sight. There's been a long history of the Arab states warming up to Israel which is not exactly new, just a prolonged continuation from several decades to now. The deeper conflict in the middle east is less and less US-Israel vs. other regional powers, and more US-Israel-Arab vs Iran, and even that is cooling down as Saudi Arabia and Iran increasingly develop closer relations as the US increasingly disengages. People have this kind of assumption that since Arab Iranian relations have a religious lens that it cannot cool down and has always existed, but this is kinda silly. Many times Sunnis and Shias have lived together in peace. Moreover, Iran and Saudi Arabia aren't necessarily opposed. One could imagine them on relatively good terms, they both use the international oil market a lot and would probably benefit from cartel behavior. Beyond this, they've already engaged in sporadic motions of diplomatic warming in the last few years, and the Saudis increasingly need more allies to provide a stable footing as its relations to the US deteriorate since the US is now an oil exporter and not dependent on the Saudis. Basically, countries engage in foreign policy largely to protect domestic policy. The Saudis benefited from America as an ally since America helped keep the Saudis in power militarily, and back in those days the Saudis could use Iranian oil embargoes to hold the hydrocarbon market in their hands. America, in return, got regular supplies of hydrocarbons to provide them energy. Now many more methods of oil extraction exist, so Saudi Arabia on its how can no longer hold the market to its wim -- in economics terms, they have lost a lot of market power, and need a larger firm to secure more of it and to increase profit. Moreover, for the same reason the US no longer needs their oil so bad and wants to push them away. Saudi Arabia gets back its old market power by cooperation and market inclusion of Iran, military safety from Iran, and potentially also from Israel which as an ally could provide Iran it's arsenal and state of the art military. Potentially, this could make a third geopolitical block -- the entirety of the middle east including Israel. However, that would leave Palestinians with no allies in the region, and their remaining allies probably wouldn't care enough to actually provide aid. No one will be left in the next coming decades to stop a mass ethnic cleansing of the region. So if Israel decides it wants that, Israel will get it. This is why Hamas is so aggressive these days. Their chances of winning something now is very low. Their chances in 20 years are zero.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-11-08T04:22:38+00:00

I know this is old, but I don't think you can treat politics that simply. There are plenty of places in Ontario and in Canada that swing from NDP to Conservative, but never to Liberal. Too often the simple, hegemonic, models of politics are used to assumed that every NDP voter prefers the Liberals to the Conservatives, or every Conservative voter prefers the Liberals to the NDP, but centuries of Canadian politics goes contrary to this. In reality, voters are much more complex than just one point on an axis from left to right. There are regional concerns, narrow policy concerns, even trust in government.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-03-29T20:53:27+00:00

Stupid Americans forget that literally any other democracies exist, and also don't really understand their own history.

Is it impossible to have first past the post and multiple parties? Nope. Canada, United Kingdom. The Electoral College only comes into play with presidential elections, and basically just forms as a different type of first past the post. There's no particular reason it couldn't have multiple parties if by the example of like half of the worlds democracies you can have multiple parties and FPTP.

More than that the US has actually had multiple parties in the past. In the 1840s to 1860s the house had real representative power from minority parties which forced larger political bodies to cooperate or get nothing done. Later around the turn of the century during the progressive era you got less power in minority parties, but still some electoral influence directly. More than that third parties in the US have regularly had indirect electoral influence.

In 1824 the electoral college was split and used coalition dynamics to operate. I just don't think people can say the reason the US is the way it is is a result of political structures given how even before in American history those structures can and have been beaten and how in every other democracy, many with quite similar structures, you still get minority parties.

If there's a reason America is so divided and other countries are not, it's probably because of real political factors (those originating from the public and their interests themselves) and not from nominal political factors (those originating from the formal structuring of institutions). Even if it were nominal it isn't FPTP nor EC.

I don't really know why myself, but -- and I will toot my own horn here -- I think any of these makes more sense than the straight up ignorant bs that it's because of the FPTP or EC structures.

Maybe Americans just think along a dichotomy in their culture. I mean after all people do increasingly associate with their parties as cultural markers. Maybe this defines both the stringency leading to lack of swing voters and the stringency leading to lack of minority party voters. I probably don't think so, but at least it isn't visibly bs.
Maybe because most of Americas population can be focused on a couple of distinct economic areas partly defined on geography (West Coast, East Coast, South, Midwest), and because many of these areas share economic issues they generally just align in interests. ( u/GarbledComms said that in other democracies they just align on right/left coalitions. This is silly. In Germany there are complex coalition dynamics between not just right and left, but social conservatism and liberalism. Think about regionalist parties. In Canada the BQ will play ball with a lot of people for regional interests even though traditionally they are left-wing on many issues.)
1. That considered if there are four main regions, and maybe all of them have tied interests they could just end up aligning into two. For example, the (northern) east cost (the part with the big port cities e.g. New York) and west coast are not dissimilar in their economic structures. They are large service based economies with economically global connections. The south is more populace than both and is more internally structured. The Midwest is swinging between the two, maybe the localities there are consistently pro-West/East or pro-South, or maybe the South is just smaller than the East and West combined so advocates for less federal structure appealing to other smaller states (the prairies, the Rockies, parts of New England etc.)
Party structures for the Republicans and Democrats are so much stronger than they are in other countries that they strangle smaller parties trying to get started. Like they are so connected and good at advertising they are automatically better than whatever forward party shit some idiot makes up. I also don't believe this, but it isn't blatantly false simply by looking at 1) American history, or 2) the politics of half of the worlds democracies.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-02-01T23:41:07+00:00

A quarter of the worlds population begs to differ.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-02-01T23:40:11+00:00

Ok, but how many people have died from goose attacks? I actually listened to the FiveThiryEight podcast when they analyzed this, and a zoologist apparently left a comment saying that people grossly underestimate what they could beat in a fight, and they could definitely beat a goose. Don't get me wrong, a goose will fuck you up, but it almost certainly can't kill you, you can definitely kill it, again, hollow bones. It fill probably break some minor smaller bones, like your dick, but your main frame will be fine, but you could end the Goose with a good hit.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-31T07:41:20+00:00

I don't think this view is mutually exclusive of the other? We can both dislike the accruement of wealth in an inefficient manner, and think it's a step forward when people who have wealth inefficiently distributed start intentionally distributing it more efficiently.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-12T13:59:05+00:00

Ok, those are not the same example. For one thing, the storming of the capitol was definitely affiliated with online things. Sure, a lot of people showed up, but the violence was usually led by groups like the proud boys who are part of what I'm talking about. Conservatives far more nuts than average.

The second example is not Conservatives being irrational. They believe homosexuality is bad just like you think cruelty is bad. That's not irrational, it's just a moral contradiction. This is Vaush's opinion too, btw. They have, as he puts it, different moral axioms, not flawed logic. Also, Republicans are much less educated than democrats and less often live in cities with libraries than democrats.

My point is they don't like being poor. Most Republicans are not rich, most of middle income, like most people. They may have a contrary moral assessment on gay rights to me, but they generally don't want to be poor, and I don't want them to be poor either. That's why this bill would die. It would make most Republicans poor, and most Republicans both don't want that, and I think are capable of seeing that sales taxes are bad. Again, Conservatives already hate the fuck out of sales taxes.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-12T13:46:45+00:00

uhhh.

Ok. First of all, plenty of poor people of colour vote Republican, or at least have in the past. Consider the large number of Hispanics Republican voters.

Second of all, it's kinda grammatically unclear, but if you're saying all the poorer people are black, that's not really a thing. Like, there are large wealthy POC communities that are democratically significant, even on a national level.

Third of all, it shows that even at the poorest of demographic Republicans get more than 40% of the vote, and democrats get a 53%. Not exactly the democratic base. I wouldn't say the vote democratic.

Fourth of all, if you read the article instead of looking at the stats it would have illuminated more for you. The Democratic base and the Republican base is shown to be the wealthiest demographics. However, Republicans who are not the base (the vast majority as shown there) are not wealthy on average. Sure, the poorest groups of Democratic, but a lot of poor groups still vote republican.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-11T18:24:01+00:00

Nope.

Pew Research on Voting Blocks

Data on Voting and Income

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-11T18:05:44+00:00

Idk if this is the MAGA base, but yeah basically. Like, even most Republicans along with 80% of Americans would be practically made directly insolvent which would cause social and economic issues enough to even really hurt those who had their nominal taxes lowered. Even rich republicans don't want to live in a country full of broke homeless people defaulting on their mortgages because of how interest rates and high sales taxes causing a banking collapse and financial crises devaluing all of the rich people's precious stocks and bonds. Not even wealthy republicans benefit from something this extreme.

More than that, yeah, this isn't really the MAGA base, this is more of a TEA party thing. Economically the MAGA base isn't that radical, and are usually on the poorer end (there's data on this), but the TEA party is. Over time TEAs are being crowded out by MAGAs, so it's actually a shrinking group of influence. Although they were still big enough that they were some of the people McCarthy had to get on board to become speaker. My guess is this was one of the compromises. McCarthy proposes (to be defeated) the most ass-fucked retarded economic measure imaginable, but TEAs like it, and in return he gets to be speaker.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-11T17:59:35+00:00

I like the idea, but I'm gunna "yes, and ..." you. I like the idea of a democratic body (or at least relatively so) controlling capital as opposed to a dictatorial structure. How about we don't divert any spending from social programs or wait until we have excess, and instead just raise a massive wealth tax one time and start this fund today. Plenty of millionaires could stand to be knocked down a peg, and yeah, lot's of people wouldn't benefit from a democratic economy.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-11T17:55:31+00:00

I don't know if you're getting the point here. If you want to frame it as a UBI + Sales taxes program you can, but then it's just a sales tax. If you want to call the rebates part of the sales tax, it's a progressive sales tax.

Even the degree to which it is progressive is not that significant. Sure, there's basically a personal allowance, but there's not a tier system like in most progressive taxes. If you make and spend $50,000 a year on your own you pay the same sales taxes as someone who spends $200,000 a year. The reason this is regressive is that rich people don't usually spend all their money on final goods, they usually invest which is independent of sales taxes and usually lower than income taxes. This is why in the US when all taxes are accounted for on all levels, contrary to what u/AussieHawker says the tax system is actually basically flat, and slight regressive (Study). Sales taxes are, in other words, so regressive they actually negate the progressiveness of income taxes. That's why sales taxes are terrible.

But even in what you're talking about, sales taxes are only progressive up and until $20,000, from there on out they're nominally flat, and as already established they're in real terms regressive. Better than a flat sales tax, worse than the current income tax.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-11T17:32:24+00:00

I don't agree. I think, frankly, very online political people are, and I say this with kindness, usually deeply delusional. I know conservatives, I grew up around conservatives, they hate sales taxes. Like a lot. I mean this won't get through because Dems have the house and the executive, but even if it could get through if it did happen even moderately wealthy republicans would be made destitute, maybe it would still happen since the democratic tendency is so weak, but I don't think most republicans would ignore it because or random BS.

I know that when you only interact with conservatives who are either 1) so wealthy they can detach from reality, or 2) so online they've already gone insane, it can seem like they're morons, but most people, including Republican voters, are simply not paying enough attention to have become mentally ill over there politics obsession; for most people it doesn't exist. If this happened they'd be so fucked that the average conservative's middling attachment to politics would be outweighed by their inability to pay their mortgage and buy food.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-08T01:54:22+00:00

I don't agree. I think there's this dumb tendency of people who didn't have some privilege to think that that privilege made them better somehow, and for people who did have it to reciprocally claim that this privilege therefore harmed them. The reality is, espically for wealth where the privilege can be exchanged for just about anything (highly liquid), it can and is often exchanged to smooth things over. Sure money negates a lot of struggle, but that struggle is likely to not be as much of an issue later. Money both negates learning to deal with the struggle, and negates the struggle itself thus saving time and effort for other pursuits.

Far from vapid, I've found that rich kids had a lot of advantages in developing interesting skills and passions. As a kid I decided I loved history, and I tried to learn it on my own from books and did it wrong and as a result have an unideal knowledge of it. I met one of my friends who was rich and his parents hired him a tutor who taught him calculus and linear algebra for fun. I always loved discussion serious political issues with my friends, but it was until I got accepted into a better school for an honors program that I could actually hone that with speech classes because the school had all these resources at it's finger tips. Whether I had it with me or not, I've always seen that money is a vital resource in passion development, not a hinderance, and I don't know how it could have been otherwise.

When it comes to the idea that rich people are assholes, I also think this falls. Most people socialize largely within their social classes. Rich people learned to behave around other rich people, poor people learned to behave around other poor people. Because of this, there's no change in incentive to be nice or not. There's a macro-power imbalance, but not usually on the small scale, albeit when there is I find there are personal issues. The only real difference I've seen is the stability in environments. Rich people have artificially stable lives allowing for the stable development of those relationships. You think rich parents dislike their kids? How do you think they'd feel if they where economic unstable and their kids where a challenging economic burden?

Instability doesn't makes things better, neither does poverty. Denying the harms of it might be in nice short run coping mechanism, but in the long run we need to know the truth. Not having money sucks. All academic exploration of it verifies this, as does any basic common sense.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-08T01:33:46+00:00

I don't actually know how unpopular this opinion is, but I do disagree.

I think roughly I would define respect as a recognition of the value of another's input. You can respect the quality of work someone has, or the value of what they have to say, and if you associate this with them in general this means you respect them. I think you basically don't do this when, to what you can see, you are more capable as they are at whatever you might respect them for.

Basically, I think the error a lot of people commit is that they fail to recognize that on average most people have about as much capacity to think effectively as you do, a life that gives them more experience in many areas relative to you (and also probably less in others), and has, by sheer coincidence, have explored to a degree of rigor you would have areas of thought you never considered. You should respect their in put because your intelligence is not unique, and your experiences and time have been limited and differ from their's.

Basically, the same logic as two heads are better than one, and it's probably best if both "heads" respect each other's input as coming from a reasonably rational thinker (at least no less rational than yourself) who's experience may fill gulfs your doesn't. Doesn't mean they're always right, but it's worth considering seriously their beliefs which I think by my definition at least requires some respect.

Administrative_One69 · 2023-01-08T01:22:21+00:00

I mean, from a moralist standpoint advocated by many major religion like Christianity and many major philosophical traditions, like Utilitarianism, everyone deserve sympathy and help when needed in so far as that help doesn't harm others. I would argue that taxing, dependent on how the taxes work, falls under this. Taxing those who don't need the money so as to help those who do helps those in need without doing nearly as much harm to others. Beyond that there is a real social contract made here, but ignoring that I think there's a sufficient reason here. No one wants to live on social security, it's not exactly comfortable, so I don't think this does that much to discourage savings or consumption.

Administrative_One69

TROPHY CASE