5 ms·

Well, don't bail out the advanced degree holders. I like your rhetoric of the liberal POV as actually conservative - "trickle down". But it's not working.

jjcon 5y ago
Just because a position is held by some progressives in the US to appeal to their young student base does not make it a 'liberal position'. Those with just Bachelors degrees still make almost twice as much as those without (average 38k vs 64k). And their median net worth is more than 2x those with just HS diplomas (74k vs 198k). Arguing that the poor should help bail out those more wealthy than them is extremely regressive any way you slice it. EDIT: To those saying 'why not just tax the rich more': That comes at the cost of (again) more equal and broad uses for that money - that doesn't make a regressive policy less regressive it just pushes the can down the road. We're talking about a 1.7T bailout for just 12% of Americans with far higher than average earning potential.
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago
  Well, if it's specifically about taxing the poor - we could levy a higher tax on the ultra-rich and earmark how that funding is used. FWIW I actually think you make a good point, but it's ignoring the fact that the ultra-rich are grossly (I'd argue an order of magnitude) undertaxed right now.
  - jjcon 5y ago
    > ultra-rich are grossly (I'd argue an order of magnitude) undertaxed right now Couldn't agree more on that point. I don't however think earmarking 1.7T for a very select 12% of Americans that have a far higher than average earning potential fixes the problem with the policy though. That 1.7T could be used in far broader more equal ways.
  - meatsauce 5y ago
- random314 5y ago
  It's an old rhetorical tactic to pitt one class of poor vs the other while ignoring the elephant in the room. For eg - Pitting rural white Americans against Mexican immigrants. You could just raise the minimum wage - a solution that would be "class warfare". You can have the rich pay for undergraduate degrees instead of the poor - as you have conveniently assumed. A rather hilarious assumption given that tax slabs for the poor are the lowest. Pitting one class of poor/middle class against the other is a fairly well known conservative tactic. Intraclass "warfare" is what conservatives want to focus on, instead of the big elephant- interclass "warfare".
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Just because a position is held by some progressives in the US to appeal to their young student base does not make it a 'liberal position'. Well, yeah, liberal and progressive positions are generally opposed.
  - jjcon 5y ago
    Agreed though only in the past few years (and primarily only in the USA) have progressives started to push against classical liberalism towards more illiberal views, that has not generally been the case in the past.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      I’m not talking about classical liberalism (which has no coherent clear application out of the context of the time and conditions around the mid-18th to early 19th Century; there's an infinite number of mutually incompatible applications of it to other contexts, including most of the modern American political spectrum.) I’m talking about liberal and progressive as modern American political factions (which in major partisan terms, though the factions aren't tightly bound to a major party, map roughly to the right and left wings of the Democratic Party.)

jjcon 5y ago

Just because a position is held by some progressives in the US to appeal to their young student base does not make it a 'liberal position'. Those with just Bachelors degrees still make almost twice as much as those without (average 38k vs 64k). And their median net worth is more than 2x those with just HS diplomas (74k vs 198k). Arguing that the poor should help bail out those more wealthy than them is extremely regressive any way you slice it. EDIT: To those saying 'why not just tax the rich more': That comes at the cost of (again) more equal and broad uses for that money - that doesn't make a regressive policy less regressive it just pushes the can down the road. We're talking about a 1.7T bailout for just 12% of Americans with far higher than average earning potential.

OnlineGladiator 5y ago
Well, if it's specifically about taxing the poor - we could levy a higher tax on the ultra-rich and earmark how that funding is used. FWIW I actually think you make a good point, but it's ignoring the fact that the ultra-rich are grossly (I'd argue an order of magnitude) undertaxed right now.
- jjcon 5y ago
  > ultra-rich are grossly (I'd argue an order of magnitude) undertaxed right now Couldn't agree more on that point. I don't however think earmarking 1.7T for a very select 12% of Americans that have a far higher than average earning potential fixes the problem with the policy though. That 1.7T could be used in far broader more equal ways.
- meatsauce 5y ago
random314 5y ago
It's an old rhetorical tactic to pitt one class of poor vs the other while ignoring the elephant in the room. For eg - Pitting rural white Americans against Mexican immigrants. You could just raise the minimum wage - a solution that would be "class warfare". You can have the rich pay for undergraduate degrees instead of the poor - as you have conveniently assumed. A rather hilarious assumption given that tax slabs for the poor are the lowest. Pitting one class of poor/middle class against the other is a fairly well known conservative tactic. Intraclass "warfare" is what conservatives want to focus on, instead of the big elephant- interclass "warfare".
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Just because a position is held by some progressives in the US to appeal to their young student base does not make it a 'liberal position'. Well, yeah, liberal and progressive positions are generally opposed.
- jjcon 5y ago
  Agreed though only in the past few years (and primarily only in the USA) have progressives started to push against classical liberalism towards more illiberal views, that has not generally been the case in the past.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    I’m not talking about classical liberalism (which has no coherent clear application out of the context of the time and conditions around the mid-18th to early 19th Century; there's an infinite number of mutually incompatible applications of it to other contexts, including most of the modern American political spectrum.) I’m talking about liberal and progressive as modern American political factions (which in major partisan terms, though the factions aren't tightly bound to a major party, map roughly to the right and left wings of the Democratic Party.)