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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#269351: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:35:48 PM

[up][up][up][up] She's involved with SESTA-FOSTA, so definitely not great. Not enough to not vote for her if she wins the nomination though.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 29th 2019 at 10:36:42 AM

PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#269352: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:37:59 PM

Yeah, the "free market" is a sham driven solely by greed. No billionaire alive actually cares about other human beings, they're all soulless monsters driven solely by greed, willing to let everyone die just to make a quick buck.

I'm not even exaggerating with the "let everyone die" part, that is literally what is happening with climate change.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#269353: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:39:41 PM

Not universally. At least Bill Gates is dedicating some portion of his wealth to combating climate change.

Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#269354: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:39:57 PM

The fact that the most talked about candidates right now are three progressive women makes me amused at the aftermath of the 2016 election where so many people were wondering if the party needed to pull back to safe moderate white dudes as the next candidate.

RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#269355: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:42:08 PM

Not just Bill Gates, IIRC there's a whole group who've signed up to give most of their fortunes to charitable causes when they die.

PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#269356: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:44:42 PM

They can't give while they're still alive?

i'm tired, my friend
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#269357: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:48:22 PM

I mean, they also can, but this is basically a confirmation that most of what they have now will also be used for charitable works in the future.

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#269358: Jan 29th 2019 at 7:55:52 PM

@Pushover Media Critic: For what it's worth, the "Free Market" doesn't actually assume anything else-in fact, it assumes exactly that.

I don't think it's a particularly reasonable assumption though to assume every billionaire is outright evil. That wouldn't make any sense.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Jan 29th 2019 at 7:56:51 AM

Leviticus 19:34
PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#269359: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:26:06 PM

[up][up]I just can't find anything charitable in essentially going "You can have my riches when I'm dead!" It's greed disguised as charity.

i'm tired, my friend
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#269360: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:28:34 PM

I would assume that at least some of these people do actually give charitably or help with causes or whatever now.

That they don't give literally everything, or even most, of what they have away while they're still alive doesn't really diminish giving it after death.

RedSavant Since: Jan, 2001
#269361: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:28:55 PM

While that's fair, it's also much better than doing what other million- and billionaires do and just give everything to Rich White Guy Jr., after spending their twilight years greasing palms to whack the estate tax down even further.

It's been fun.
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#269362: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:32:54 PM

[up][up] I mean, Bill Gates is one of those people behind this initiative.

And he's not exactly hoarding wealth now. I guess it's a matter of not leaving a trust to manage things whilst you're still alive to direct it?

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#269363: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:33:32 PM

I would be slightly less bothered with billionaires if they were taxed properly. They usually are not, and even if they were would still have so much money left over that they could leave a pretty luxurious life and be left wanting for nothing.

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#269364: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:34:10 PM

[up][up][up]That reminds of the, I don't know if "outrage" is the right word for it but something when Bill Gates said that when he and his wife die each of his kids are only getting 10 million and the rest is going to whoever.

That rubbed some people the wrong way.

Edited by LSBK on Jan 29th 2019 at 10:34:25 AM

wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#269365: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:37:18 PM

For reference, Bezos gives 0.0906% to charity.

So percentage wise, most of us are donating more. And Bezos didn’t “earn” those billions; he took them by cutting corners and squeezing workers and demanding corporate welfare to bring those miserable warehouse jobs to new cities.

Additionally, billionaire donations are often poorly managed, going to nonsense like university endowments (Harvard is already worth BILLIONS) rather than effective anti-poverty work. Also, the very existence of billionaires is unethical and a massive sign of how broken our economic system is.

Edited by wisewillow on Jan 29th 2019 at 11:39:20 AM

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#269366: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:37:21 PM

That reminds of the, I don't know if "outrage" is the right word for it but something when Bill Gates said that when he and his wife die each of his kids are only getting 10 million and the rest is going to whoever.

That rubbed some people the wrong way.

Someone crunched the numbers and found Bill has saved something like six million lives with his charity so far.

Warren Buffet started his charities when Bill Gates asked him what was the point of being the world's richest man if not to help people.

Additionally, billionaire donations are often poorly managed, going to nonsense like university endowments (Harvard is already worth BILLIONS) rather than effective anti-poverty work. Also, the very existence of billionaires is unethical and a massive sign of how broken our economic system is.

Generally, my view of this is a lot of people don't actually understand how being a billionaire (or even a millionaire works). You're right about charitable donations being mismanaged but the simple fact is that if a man owns Amazon or Google (or a large chunk of it) then that's fundamentally different than having a big pile of cash.

Most billionaires are owners of pieces of companies which are the wealth. Not cash rich.

Dividing up Google among investors doesn't help anyone. Indeed, it encourages companies to drive up stock prices and maintain them at the expense of long term company health.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 29th 2019 at 8:47:50 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#269367: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:49:08 PM

"Earn".

Who determines, objectively, who's earned what? The nature of capitalism, is that, given enough time, the market will ALWAYS produce billionaires. There's literally no way around it short of abolishing it Star Trek Style, and we know that's likely never going to happen.

Let's put it like this: If income inequality, were virtually non-existent, with everyone getting their fair shake, but there obviously being rich and super rich would anyone really care about the existence of billionaires?

Absolutely not. You're attacking a symptom. Not the cause.

New Survey coming this weekend!
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#269368: Jan 29th 2019 at 8:49:44 PM

I think people would really enjoy this article.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/11/18129580/gates-buffet-charity-billionaire-philanthropy

David Callahan caused a stir with a piece last week at Inside Philanthropy, which pointed out that the wealthiest people in the world are sitting on $4 trillion, and accumulating money much faster than they give it away.

“[Bill] Gates was worth $54 billion in 2010, the year the Giving Pledge debuted; he’s worth $97 billion today. [Warren] Buffett’s wealth has also nearly doubled, to $90 billion, despite annual transfers of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and the four foundations controlled by his three children,” Callahan wrote.

With some billionaires, there’s a simple explanation for why they don’t give away more money: They don’t really feel like it.

But that doesn’t seem like a fully satisfying explanation when it comes to Gates, Buffett, or other billionaires who’ve pledged to give away their wealth before they die. I want to speak up in their partial defense here: It’s actually shockingly challenging to effectively give away vast sums of money, especially at the rates billionaires would need to give to keep up with their recent gains on the stock market.

Philanthropy is harder than you think

It can strain credulity that it’s really that challenging to give away money. But when you look at the track record of many poorly planned, failed philanthropy projects, it gets clearer.

This year, the data came out from a $575 million multi-year project to improve schools, spearheaded by more than $200 million from the Gates Foundation — and the expensive intervention didn’t improve student outcomes at all. Mark Zuckerberg spent $100 million to improve schools and saw some modest gains — but they were small and accompanied by outrage and local backlash. (My colleague Dylan Matthews has pleaded for philanthropists to stay out of education, where their track records are particularly disappointing.)

The short version is that the economic system is designed to serve the wealthy 1% so much that people who actively are trying to give away billions find themselves stymied at every turn.

You can't also liquidate a lot of assets.

The most successful have created foundations that absorb all the gains but even this is hard.

When the Gates Foundation has found an intervention that works and continues to work at scale, they’ve doubled down on it and poured in more money. Fighting malaria, for example, is a case where money continues to make a big difference even at scale, and the Gates Foundation has committed $2 billion to the fight.

This bluntly immunizes them to criticism from me.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 29th 2019 at 8:56:49 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#269369: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:00:30 PM

Also, the very existence of billionaires is unethical

I can understand most of what you're saying, but what does this part even mean?

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#269370: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:01:45 PM

Some people imagine billionaires are innately people who must have built their hordes of treasure Smaug style by taking it from the pockets of the working dwarf.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Eschaton Since: Jul, 2010
#269371: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:05:09 PM

I've seen people expressing it more in the vein of "every billionaire is a policy failure."

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#269372: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:08:16 PM

I stick with, "I don't wish to take the money of the rich, I wish the poor to be made rich."

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#269373: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:09:01 PM

Unless the value of money means that being a billionaire is no longer the prestige it sounds like it is, the system should not accommodate such a logarithmically dispropoprtionate allotment of income. I'm no economist but my intuition says the log disparity in income (not to be confused with total wealth) should max out at 3 figures rather than 6 or more.

[up]Not in the short term; immediately confiscating the physical wealth of the rich (or eating them) like many revolutionary radicals advocate is less useful than it seems. It's more effective to alter policy so that wealth does not accumulate at the top to the degree that it does and that the majority of it remains in healthy circulation among the bottom 99%.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 29th 2019 at 12:19:16 PM

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#269374: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:10:45 PM

There's a misconception of assuming that there's a definite, fixed amount of money in any economy. A person having a lot more money than you does not intrinsically make you poorer. Actually, the opposite tends to be true.

I would even go as far as to argue wealth inequality is not necessarily a sign of something wrong in society. There's nothing morally wrong with being wealthy in and of itself.

Leviticus 19:34
Friendperson Since: May, 2018
#269375: Jan 29th 2019 at 9:42:48 PM

How do you guys think the veritable cornucopia of democratic presidental candidates will work for the party in 2020?


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