Ethicists - Voting Your Heart is Immoral

[PickelledEggs]

Ok. If it makes you happy that I remove one word, it' s not stupid.

But I still stand by the fact that voting third party will literally do nothing. Zilch. Nada. It won't make any sort of difference at all because a third party candidate has absolutely no chance at winning. The only way we are going to change this country, is not through presidential elections, but through electing out senators and representatives... the other 2/3 of the judicial system. That will be a long, tedious process, but it needs to be done. We can't pretend that part of the government away and then complain that the President isn't doing their job. The other 2/3 will impede an otherwise good president in to not being able to accomplish anything.

[widdershins]

Ok. If it makes you happy that I remove one word, it' s not stupid.

But I still stand by the fact that voting third party will literally do nothing. Zilch. Nada. It won't make any sort of difference at all because a third party candidate has absolutely no chance at winning. The only way we are going to change this country, is not through presidential elections, but through electing out senators and representatives... the other 2/3 of the judicial system. That will be a long, tedious process, but it needs to be done. We can't pretend that part of the government away and then complain that the President isn't doing their job. The other 2/3 will impede an otherwise good president in to not being able to accomplish anything.

I can agree with most of that, except you came a little bit too far my way.  There was really never any doubt that voting for a third party would not produce the effect of getting the candidate elected.  But it will not have exactly "zero" effect.  You were right that it may have the effect of getting the "wrong" candidate elected.  That I never disputed, just that it was not the same as staying home.

To be clear, it is still a viable choice if the intent of your vote has some reason OTHER THAN getting a person elected and that reason is more important to you than getting a person elected.  For instance, let's say I write in Bernie Sanders and so do 30 million other people.  30 million votes won't get Bernie the presidency, but it would cost Hillary the presidency.  Trump would be president.  So the immediate and obvious effect is that it cost Hillary the presidency.  But there would be another effect.  If 30 million people wrote in the same candidate, that's a big deal.  That changes the demographic.  It potentially destroys the 2 party stranglehold on the system.  Now is THAT going to happen?  Probably not.  Maybe some day, but not likely today.  But to me, changing the entire demographic would be better/more important than changing the outcome of a single election.  IF 30 million people wrote in Bernie, even though he's not running, yes, Trump would win, but it would be a game changer.  Once people lost the mentality that voting for a third party is not "throwing your vote away", only then is it actually possible to get a third party candidate in office.

Now I am certainly not advocating for writing in Bernie, and I will certainly not be doing that.  It would take a whole hell of a lot of people to be "stupid" for that to make a difference, though it might not take 30 million.  But I do like to stay at least reality adjacent here.

[widdershins]

For the record, I have evaluated the current list of idiots and asshole and come to the conclusion that in this particular election, while I still disagree that voting for a candidate you believe in is immoral, I believe that in this case voting for anyone other than Hillary would be absolutely moronic (personal opinion here, not absolute fact).  Trump is an obvious "NO FUCKING WAY!!!", but then I always vote for "NOT the Republican".  But the other two, they're just no "presidential material".  They have all these grand plans to fix everything suspiciously similar to the get-rich-quick scheme of Underwear Gnomes.

Stein is going to use accounting magic to make student loan disappear in the same way the government took care of the banks...except it's not.  The way she wants to do it is something she obviously doesn't understand because it doesn't work the way she thinks it does, it wasn't used the way she thinks it was and, oh yeah, the government actually made money on the bailout in the end because it wasn't just "free money".

And Johnson wants a "consumption tax", which every damned body knows is going to hit the poor and the middle class the hardest.  Hell, even the people who say it won't actually fucking know better.  But he's going to fix that by sending each and every one of us monthly "prebate checks".  USA!  Now with a 90% more cluster-fuckey tax system!  Wouldn't that just be awesome?

And, like Stein, his plan is "Step 1, change the tax system.  Step 2, ?????.  Step 3, profit!"

Both are too stupid to be president.  We tried Forest Gump with the last president and it didn't work out so well for us (Bush, not Obama, the current president).  There is another guy, but he's a nobody and, worse, he's a "constitutional conservative", which means he wants to pretend the country can be run exactly was it was in 1776, when murders never happened, gay people weren't invented yet and every white, male Christian had equal rights with every other white, male Christian.  That makes him just about the fucktardiest of them all.

So, Hillary it is, not that I ever really disliked her anyway.  Most of the shit people hate about her is shit Faux News and the dickless right just made up.  A vote for Hillary is a vote, pretty much for the only game in town that isn't going to screw us all.

[Baruch]

Well if you happen to be Left wing, or a Progressive Democrat ... then it is pretty obvious who to vote for ... unless you are Left wing and still pissed that Bernie didn't get the D-nomination and so will sit out the election.

On policy ideas ... yes, it is possible to make the student debt go away, same as it was created out of nothing in the first place.  This all started with a reform of the student financial support system that happened under Obama.  It can be un-reformed.  That isn't to say, we can send everyone to college for free ... there is no free lunch.  But the student loans (currently outstanding) are in fake dollars anyway.  The crooks who fronted the loans at the behest of the Feds, they might go bankrupt, but no real loss there.  The idea that all politically connected businesses are guaranteed survival, let alone a consistent profit ... is fascism.

And yes, probably a consumption tax .... that doesn't involve deleting most of the other taxes, is a bad idea.  Americans are already over taxed at the middle and lower levels.  There is a general need to reform taxes, but that is bigger than just changing the form of the tax (from income to consumption).  The best thing would be a collapse of the US into chaos, and the death of the Federal government (because the military and GS employees no longer have a pay check).  Onward Soviet!

[widdershins]

Well if you happen to be Left wing, or a Progressive Democrat ... then it is pretty obvious who to vote for ... unless you are Left wing and still pissed that Bernie didn't get the D-nomination and so will sit out the election.

On policy ideas ... yes, it is possible to make the student debt go away, same as it was created out of nothing in the first place.  This all started with a reform of the student financial support system that happened under Obama.  It can be un-reformed.  That isn't to say, we can send everyone to college for free ... there is no free lunch.  But the student loans (currently outstanding) are in fake dollars anyway.  The crooks who fronted the loans at the behest of the Feds, they might go bankrupt, but no real loss there.  The idea that all politically connected businesses are guaranteed survival, let alone a consistent profit ... is fascism.

And yes, probably a consumption tax .... that doesn't involve deleting most of the other taxes, is a bad idea.  Americans are already over taxed at the middle and lower levels.  There is a general need to reform taxes, but that is bigger than just changing the form of the tax (from income to consumption).  The best thing would be a collapse of the US into chaos, and the death of the Federal government (because the military and GS employees no longer have e pay check).  Onward Soviet!

It is possible to make all student debt go away, but it is not possible to make all student debt go away the way Stein thinks she's going to do it.

Johnson wants do do away with most other taxes and replace the whole works with a consumption tax.  Economists all agree it won't work.  Everyone agrees it targets "not the rich" most.  The general number thrown out is 28%, which is already a cut from the top tax bracket of 35%.  That aside, people who make thousands of dollars a year spend thousands of dollars a year, usually at or very near their total income.  People who make millions of dollars a year or more very rarely spend millions of dollars a year or more at or very near their total income.  It is an obvious and undeniable shift of the tax burden to those who can least afford to bear the tax burden when the only money you tax is "the money you have to spend to survive", which is exactly what a consumption tax does.

Any serious tax reform would have to deal with government spending.  The federal government would have to cut back.  They would have to eliminate things.  They would have to cut jobs.  Short term, it would suck ass.  Long term, it would be great for the country to have to live by a budget the way the rest of us do.

Personally I would like to see a "tax cap", an amount above which the government cannot charge.  And I mean all government agencies combined.  They can move the taxes up and down as much as they like, but they have to stay within the cap.  Personally, I don't think the government should be taking more than 25% of anyone's income, no matter how much you make.  So maybe the feds can take up to 17.5%, the state up to 5%, the county up to 2% and the city up to .5% for a total of no more than 25%.  Then you also get rid of all other taxes which are called taxes and fees which are taxes which aren't called taxes.  From that you get your property tax, your school tax, your sales tax, your Internet and telephone "fees", which are really taxes, but the FCC can't levy taxes, so they called them fees instead.  All of that would be gone.  You also don't pay to license cars or get a drivers license.  The only thing aside from that you could be charged is fines, and they need to reign those in too, including laws about where the money goes so police no longer have incentive to steal from people they pull over.  I would also like to see every person and every income type have the same rate.  No more bullshit "sliding scale" which goes up and up and up until your income is tens of millions and then plummets once you can afford to earn the types of income rich people get, like "capitol gains".  And to help the poor you just don't tax income for anyone on the first 2x poverty level they earn.  So if poverty level is $100, you don't tax the first $200 anybody earns.  If someone makes $201 then you tax them on the $1 they went over.

To be fair, I doubt that's actually realistic.  To be sure, the government would implode if they were restricted to such a budget.  It wouldn't be the same government we know today.  But when the recession hit and states were faced with lower tax revenues because of massive unemployment the response was too often to "raise taxes" to fill the gap.  Just let that sink in for a moment and think about what that means.  The people were making less, so the states decided to take a higher percentage of what they made so that the STATE didn't have to suffer like its people were suffering.  Not, "People are hurting.  There's no more money to take.  We need to cut back".  No, it was "People are hurting, but fuck them, we have pork projects to fund!"

I wouldn't mind a minor governmental implosion to get us out from under a tax system where the more money you make, the easier it is to avoid paying taxes.  Hell, my wife won on a scratch ticket one years and we learned about the "gambling losses" write off we could take.  The next year, however, when she didn't win, there was no such write off.  The system is rigged against the people.  But I don't want to see the death of the federal government.  It's because of them that my air isn't too toxic, I can mostly drink the water (so long as I don't drink too much or too often) and corporations don't outright own me from birth (it's more of a 50/50 split).

[Baruch]

Policy battles ... the usual "reform" people mention is some form of "enabling of the market forces to provide X" ... which only generates another corporate welfare handout.  Consider if we did this with milk to children in elementary school.  Say the government creates a favored corporation monopoly, so they can charge $10 for a little carton of milk.  Then they propose, the tikes can't afford that, let's subsidize the parents so they can afford that ... lets create a bureaucracy to administrate this government program (in addition to the one that is making the milk monopoly work), so that now the net cost is $20 for a little carton of milk, after you have taken into account all the money changing hands.  So we provide $9 subsidy (a coupon) to the parents so they can pay $1 for their $10 milk, and the delivery bureaucracy consumes the remaining dollar on the delivery end ... and on the production end we provide restraint of trade worth $8 plus we have $1 milk with $1 for the production bureaucracy for a net of $10 on that end.  The producer gets to use the government at both ends ... the government gets $2 total for their contribution, and the parents get $9 coupon (fake) and the producer gets $9 total ($8 profit).  This is assuming that the milk company doesn't get a direct government subsidy as well.

Please don't quote "economists" ... same as quoting the Pope or the Brookings Institute!  If you can't do the math, then go back to school.  Also understand how creative accounting works, because that is the only way it is done now.

[Hydra009]

For the record, I have evaluated the current list of idiots and asshole and come to the conclusion that in this particular election, while I still disagree that voting for a candidate you believe in is immoral, I believe that in this case voting for anyone other than Hillary would be absolutely moronic (personal opinion here, not absolute fact).

Welcome to a few months ago.

So what happened to this "It's not about winning the election.  It's about rejecting the corrupt system in the hopes that enough people will eventually do the same to make a difference" stuff?  Are you nixxing your earlier protest voting stance?  Cause I don't see how that could possibly be squared with the assertion that not backing the Dem nominee would be absolutely moronic.

[Baruch]

Ridding ourselves of bad student loans ...

Admit that we criminally pushed those loans (same as the first and second mortgage loans pushed before 2008).  The government is criminal, and the people pushing the loans are criminal, and the universities are accessories to the crime.  The students and their parents aren't innocent (nor the families that took out crooked mortgages).  We could choose to go punitive ... arrest the university officials, arrest the politicians, arrest the loan sharks, arrest the parents and arrest the students ... for RICO.  But it should be sufficient to repudiate in the law, all student loans issued since 2008 until the date of the new law which terminates this abuse.  Loans can be repudiated by government fiat.  The politicians, the parents, the students and the university officials avoid jail.  The loan sharks are driven into bankruptcy, and find new steam room criminal operations to work in.  The DINO/RINO crowd will want to transfer the $trillion IOU to the Federal Reserve, to paid for later by the taxpayers, but don't let them!

There will be fallout ... there will be no more student loans ... you pay cash, or you don't go.  Don't have $50k or $100k in the piggy bank?  Tough shit.  This will upset students, parents and university officials.  There are consequences to the bankruptcy of the US higher education system (hello online learning for free is here already).  Only rich parents will be able to afford to send rich students to college, as it was before WW II.  Just another temporary balloon market to bust.  Online learning is free; if you are still paying for it, you need to go to debtor's prison for idiots.  We will be able to close thousands of useless college classrooms (we don't need educated people in the US, the Chinese and Indians will supply the need), leaving the Ivy League to do what they do best ... baby sitting the scions of the rich, who will replace their parent "leaders of the nation" in due time.  America has had an aristocracy since the Gilded Age ... wake up.

[Baruch]

On taxes just two ideas ...

A consumption tax instead of an income tax.  But make the consumption tax no more than 5%, similar to a municipal sales tax.  If the Feds need more tax than that (they can print an infinity of money anyway, see Dark Economy worth many trillions since 2000) they can just create it from nothing (without any Federal Reserve).  If you don't like that, maybe you should outlaw the Dark Economy, that really didn't exist before 2000 anyway, when Bill Clinton enabled it.  Yes sales tax is regressive on the poor ... but the poor should be regressed, not enabled.  Or if you really want, just give all the Federal sales tax back to the poor at the end of the year ... won't amount to much of the total anyway.

Now if you want a punitive tax on the rich as post facto revolutionary justice ... that is a different animal.  I would support a 100% tax on all income greater than $500k per annum ... and anyone going expat ... looses everything they own in the US, as traitors should.  Unless we simply want to kill them and get their misery over with ;-)

[Baruch]

Third party info ...

Evan McMullin in Utah, may decide the national election.  Third party Republican may defeat both Trump and Clinton.

Gary Johnson has lost 1/2 of his supporters in the past 2 months.  Looks like I will have to vote early and often ;-)

[Shiranu]

I will say this, Baruch really stepped his "...wtf." game up today...

[PickelledEggs]

I will say this, Baruch really stepped his "...wtf." game up today...

He's been in that mode lately.

[widdershins]

Welcome to a few months ago.

So what happened to this "It's not about winning the election.  It's about rejecting the corrupt system in the hopes that enough people will eventually do the same to make a difference" stuff?  Are you nixxing your earlier protest voting stance?  Cause I don't see how that could possibly be squared with the assertion that not backing the Dem nominee would be absolutely moronic.

Yeah, I know.  I just wanted to update the decision I came to.

No, I'm not nixxing my earlier stance.  Hillary IS the best candidate.  Stein and Johnson are neither one very bright, Trump has serious mental issues, the other guy is a Republican and I always, ALWAYS vote for "NOT the Republican".  My stance doesn't have to change to reach this conclusion.

And for the record, I never said anything about any "protest vote" or "rejecting" any system.  My stance was about voting for the person I thought best represented my views.  In this case that is definitely Hillary by a mile in a half-mile race.  In this case, voting for Hillary does not represent a change of any kind in my stance.  Look up any post I made where I mentioned her and you'll see that I have been saying for months that I didn't think she was that bad a person or candidate and that most of what people dislike about her is just bullshit Republicans just made up and people bought.  In fact, early on in my posting about Hillary (in a Bernie thread) I was repeatedly being accused of being a Hillary supporter because I defended her repeatedly.  Not that I have any great love for her or anything.  It's just that, as I see it, the facts show that she's not that bad.  A little ignorant of the plight of the middle class, but that also describes <name a politician> to one degree or another.

[widdershins]

On taxes just two ideas ...

A consumption tax instead of an income tax.  But make the consumption tax no more than 5%, similar to a municipal sales tax.  If the Feds need more tax than that (they can print an infinity of money anyway, see Dark Economy worth many trillions since 2000) they can just create it from nothing (without any Federal Reserve).  If you don't like that, maybe you should outlaw the Dark Economy, that really didn't exist before 2000 anyway, when Bill Clinton enabled it.  Yes sales tax is regressive on the poor ... but the poor should be regressed, not enabled.  Or if you really want, just give all the Federal sales tax back to the poor at the end of the year ... won't amount to much of the total anyway.

Now if you want a punitive tax on the rich as post facto revolutionary justice ... that is a different animal.  I would support a 100% tax on all income greater than $500k per annum ... and anyone going expat ... looses everything they own in the US, as traitors should.  Unless we simply want to kill them and get their misery over with ;-)

I'm not getting to all the shit you said which I think is a little off the wall, but a consumption tax is bad for anyone who isn't earning millions a year.  And a 5% consumption tax would make the federal government extinct.  I tried learning Russian once.  It's not fucking easy.  No thank you.

Those who don't earn much spend 100% of what they earn, or near enough.  Those who earn too much spend a much smaller percentage.  Let's throw out a ridiculously high number for top earners and say 10%.  That means that the crooks at the top aren't being taxed on 90% of their earnings, giving them even more incentive to hoard all the money than they have now.  Don't spend and it's tax free.  When you want to spend, spend it somewhere without a consumption tax.  There is no way to implement a system where that couldn't happen.

As for taxing 100% over $500K income, I don't begrudge someone a massive income.  If you own a company that sells billions of dollars in merchandise, good for you!  You've earned a big-ass income!  If you figure out which companies to invest in to make you $50,000,000 this year, great!  You are a smart person and you deserve that income.  I just don't think anyone earning $50,000,000 should be taxed at a lower percentage than someone earning $50,000, ESPECIALLY when we have a progressive tax system where the more you earn, the higher the percentage you pay.  At least, until you're filthy rich.

The right calls it "income redistribution", and to an extent, it is.  but if you don't do something about the 400 people in the world who hoard half the world's wealth eventually nobody else will have any wealth.

As for the government printing money whenever they want, it's not exactly "whenever they want".  If they printed $100 trillion today to pay off the national debt and have some spending cash on hand the dollar would bottom out in the global market and the $100 trillion they printed wouldn't be worth enough to pay our $20~ trillion in debt.

Third party info ...

Evan McMullin in Utah, may decide the national election.  Third party Republican may defeat both Trump and Clinton.

Gary Johnson has lost 1/2 of his supporters in the past 2 months.  Looks like I will have to vote early and often ;-)

The idea the McMullin has a chance in hell is hyperbole.  It's the political version of "Shark Week".  MAYBE he could win Utah.  But with even Texas on the verge of flipping blue, six electoral votes are not realistically going to be enough to cause a tie.  And EVEN IF they were, Republicans wouldn't dare elect McMullin instead of Trump.  There would be literal killing in the streets.  They know full well that it would literally cause an armed revolt because Trump already has his loyal voters primed to revolt if Hillary wins.  If the election is ACTUALLY stolen from him it would lead to civil war, or pretty damned close.  While there may be some Republicans stupid enough to think they could get away with such a thing I highly doubt a majority of them are not going to realize that it would be the death of the Republican party and possibly the literal deaths of at least some of them.  This is a daydream.

[Hydra009]

No, I'm not nixxing my earlier stance.  Hillary IS the best candidate.  Stein and Johnson are neither one very bright, Trump has serious mental issues, the other guy is a Republican and I always, ALWAYS vote for "NOT the Republican".  My stance doesn't have to change to reach this conclusion.

It does if you say that voting third party is a good thing to do and later call it a moronic thing to do.  A reasonable, conscientious person would pick up on the discrepancy and admit to being wrong in the past.  Pretending that one's stance hasn't changed is the decidedly less accurate and less respectable way of dealing with that incongruity.

And for the record, I never said anything about any "protest vote" or "rejecting" any system.

That's why I quoted you directly.  So that when you say "It's about rejecting the corrupt system" in one post and then it's not about "'rejecting' any system" in the next, it's easy for people to recognize what you're doing.