All of these things objectively happened. A conservative might argue that they weren’t all Reagan’s fault/responsibility, but that’s bullshit.
A modern conservative would take credit for every bit of this.
Even the deficits prevent future spending
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Anyone who believes Reagan was a RINO is a FICA (fascist in complete actuality).
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to specific claims made in the OP?
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It took congress and a nation full of assholes to allow it. Every adult that was alive and able to vote at the time is responsible to some degree. Same as now.
People that voted against the assholes that did those things are not responsible.
I disagree.
We all have a responsibility. It isn’t as weighty an onus as someone that actively chose that leadership, but that’s the price of democracy, we all share in the burden as well as the benefits.
If nothing else, passively accepting it without revolution is a form of responsibility. We should be acting in that fashion now and aren’t, despite the invasion of body autonomy, the blatant racism and bigotry present in the system, and the massive numbers of people that will die because we didn’t rise up.
Notice the we in that. My old, crippled ass is just as responsible for not taking direct action. I was too young during Reagan, but I saw this shit coming during shrub/bush2 after 9/11. Didn’t do anything but vote and complain then, and don’t now because nobody believes how bad it’s going to get.
So, yeah everyone in responsible.
Yea, no. Half the reason democracy is great is getting to say, “I didn’t vote for the fuckhole.”
Well, grab your gun and lead, hero. Put up, or shut up.
You joining up?
Even the most radical leftist people I’ve known aren’t willing to join in. The last time I tried to get people moving with direct action, it was useless. Nobody willing to stand the fuck up and go take the kids that were/are in those fucking “immigration” concentration camps.
I fucking tried.
One crazy old fuck like me can’t do shit except shoot and die. It takes numbers, coordinated, to pull off a rescue attempt like that. People would be all mad, and I’d suggest actually doing something, and then it was all “but I can’t leave my job”, and “we have to work within the system”.
So, I’m putting up and shutting up. You want me to lead? Fine. Let’s do this shit. We start with those concentration camps. We get people on board, arm ourselves and each other. Whoever is closest gets assigned to surveillance while we build numbers, then we pick the most viable targets and get people out.
You in?
Edit: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_immigrant_detention_sites_in_the_United_States
Pick one.
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Just before he was elected, his campaign conspired to prevent the release of US hostages, a move they made to make Carter look bad. This is one of the reasons he won. The man worked directly against the benefit of US citizens for personal gain.
It’s a shame that Carter gets the blame for failing to reach an agreement to release the hostages, instead of Regan getting pinned for the much worse behavior of deliberately delaying their release.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up your claim?
Someone else here already linked a wiki article that summarizes it. As far as I know, the most recent source is a retelling of events from Ben Barnes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html.
That sounds shockingly similar to some current happenings…
Where did you learn that?
This is one report about it. It’s fair to ask for sources of course but also literally all I had to do was do one web search.
This is widely known now.
The burden of proof is on the claimant. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Please provide it
Sir, this is an internet.
Sources should be easy to find, then.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
Check the references.
There was once a union employee. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking “illegally” the big companies did hardcore union busting. This employee, young and with a family, was suddenly thrusted into a world with wages racing to the bottom. People being fired for any or no reason. Strike? Say hi to your scabs.
I know this is vague, but it’s real. Edited for privacy, but real nonetheless. Fuck Ronald Reagan.
Edit:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/788002965 Some context for my anecdote. Sorry :(
Ronald Reagan is such a scab himself, he once led strikes as the head of the SAG, then look what he did to Unions.
US workers are too tribal, each industry thinks they’re different than others.
See what happened with the nordic unions, uniting against Tesla across different industries? This is what the American unions should have done to the US government after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Automotive, public servants, train drivers, every union should have walked out until the controllers were reinstated. Instead they looked on as if it didn’t apply to them.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to specific claims made in the OP?
Hey sorry about that, I’m new here and I appreciate the chance to fix.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/788002965
This is from Planet Money of NPR which really sums up the entire event way better than I could. If necessary I’ll try to dig up an even better source. My original comment is admittedly anecdotal.
Much appreciated, thank you.
I think I just had a stroke trying to read that
I’m sorry it reads the way it does. Part of my reason for joining Lemmy was to go back to the old way of the internet where you are only a screen name with no real ties to identity. The uncensored version of my story would be too easy to dox unfortunately.
I’ll work on my writing :(
I did not see repealing the fairness doctrine mentioned.
This is what is basically allowing media like fox “news” to spout straight up lies and made up news, while selectively not mentioning, twisting or brushing over actual news.
It’s also what allowed Sinclair to start their buying spree and create a hidden broadcast network of similar right-wing propaganda and lies. John Oliver had a very good episode on them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
For me this is the biggest sin of Ronald Reagan. Without this change to content quality control, there wouldn’t be so many Americans who live in an alternate reality, which is also what is allowing the republican party to not even try to govern & is allowing them to be as despicable as they are. Those rightwing “news” channels will after all just brush over their gaffes & instead conjure some made up scandal again over something democrats or one of the designated out groups has allegedly done.
I believe the fairness doctrine only applied to print media so unfortunately we’d still have the same clusterfuck as far as television goes.The above argument was wrong, but posted so frequently when this issue comes up I mistook it for the Truth™©® :P
Not to defend this ghoul or anything lol I wish there was a hell so he could be rotting in it.
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You’re right! I don’t know why I read that argument so many times whenever this is brought up…
Fox News is cable. And was never subject to the fairness doctrine. It may have had a small impact on AM radio. But nothing near the impact of all the consolidation that happened under Reagan and Clinton.
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I think the reason AM radio is right wing is it’s only good for talking, and the people who listen to long conversations as their form of media consumption tend to be conservatives.
Mostly consolidation of ownership. Don’t get me wrong, the fairness doctrine and played a small part. But single ownership of a vast swath of stations did far more damage than lack of fairness doctrine.
Not to mention how fair was the fairness doctrine? Did it truly serve a purpose giving voice to other opinions etc? Or was it largely limited to the same few mainstream ones? Socialist, social democrats, anarchists, communists?
Fox news was launched when the fairness doctrine was already dead for many years and Rush Limbaugh was huge. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, right wing talk radio shows wouldn’t have been so ubiquitous. Without similar alternate fact content from many sources, fox news alternate facts would have to be closer to reality out of necessity or they would have no credibility with their target audience.
It’s one of those things where one thing lead to another. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, fox news as we know it today, would simply not exist. Here’s a good article on it: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2021/how-rush-limbaughs-rise-after-the-gutting-of-the-fairness-doctrine-led-to-todays-highly-partisan-media/
I don’t get your comment about how the impact on am radio was “small”. Consensus seems to be that the repeal in 1987 was the start of the shift to the alternate facts radio shows on am radio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_talk_radio
Most consolidation came later and it’s definitely a contributing factor, but this shift was already well under way before most of the consolidation happened.
Fox News was conceived in the 1970s. Yes, it started after the fairness doctrine was ended. The fairness doctrine never applied to it in any way however. Even then in the late '90s early 2000s, much of the content was designed with the concept of the fairness doctrine in mind. Any overtly political show, such as Hanity and Colmes. Already had a fake diverse/alternate voice built in. The fairness doctrine was always toothless and easily bypassable
Rush Limbaugh as problematic as he was. Was largely pushed by large conservative owned radio networks. There is some correlation between the end of the fairness doctrine and Limbaugh’s national syndication. But no clear causation. No part of the fairness doctrine would have impacted syndication. And his show exist fine before and after.
Plenty of people nostalgically lament the loss of the fairness doctrine. But none can actually explain how it would help. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the concept. But the problem is, who is the arbiter of what is “fair”. Or when it is fair. It makes a difference.
Fox news was launched in 1996. In did not adhere to the fairness doctrine in any way. Yes it did follow classic panel show formatting with multiple guests with differing opinions, but that’s just the classic format for those shows, that’s not the fairness doctrine. You can even find shows like that in Russia. Fairness doctrine would be for example that every time that a fox news slandered someone, that person would be able to demand airing a rebuttal on fox news.
Rush Limbaugh was first nationally syndicated in 1988. The fairness doctrine was done away with in 1987. It’s really no coincidence and it’s plenty documented and discussed. Check the 2 links I send you earlier for starters.
He also further spread anti-government sentiment which has made society far worse as people question everything about government and how it can help people.
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Why is questioning the government a bad thing? Shouldnt we have questioned the government more when we were looking for WMDs?
Difference between holding government accountable and outright saying government is always the problem. The latter only creates apathy among voters.
You summarized it well.
You have two different things there, holding the government accountable, is a thing that happens AFTER they have harmed you, why dont we have mistrust for them while they are making a claim?
Small recent example. General blanket distrust in government leads to unwillingness to trust governmental health experts, leading to making the covid pandemic worse than was necessary.
As was intended by those like Reagan.
Or conversely, the general trust in the government led people to go along with measures like lockdowns that harmed the economy, caused severe inflation, and didnt let the kids go to school.
You are literally repeating bullshit government talking points four years later, you need a little less trust in “experts”.
You are literally repeating bullshit conservative misinformation.
I am a former engineer, so I am a data driven person not a propaganda driven person. I watched the data they published and I saw exactly what happened before and after lockdowns, and it was literally zero change. But they kept doing it for year(s?) afterward because you guys trusted them. And if you dont believe me, they had a whole big data anaylsis by JP morgan chase at the time. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11687699/lockdowns-difference-coronavirus-destroyed-livelihoods-jp-morgan/
Did you know that the Boost app lets you add tags to people’s names?
I think its amusing that I trigger you guys so much just by disagreeing.
Not really, because the way to ensure government doesn’t do bad things is to vote. There’s no reason to believe that anti-government sentiment makes people politically apathetic.
the way to ensure government doesn’t do bad things is to vote
Not in the US, it isn’t.
There’s no reason to believe that anti-government sentiment makes people politically apathetic.
Do you think anti-government sentiment makes people less apathetic? I don’t mean fringes on Facebook, I mean regular people who work and pay their bills and have an hour to get whatever news they can before they sleep and do it all over again.
Are you aware that the worst atrocities committed by any group of humans have been committed by governments?
It’s good to question government. Governments’ relationship to their subjects is one of domination. That can go bad very quickly because it’s nothing like a relationship between equals.
You left out Oliver North helping the Contras smuggle tons and tons of cocaine into America, creating the Crack Epidemic of the 1980’s.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to support those claims?
American Dad isn’t what I’d generally consider a credible source, but hey at least it’s something!
Which came thru Arkansas while Clinton was governor. Not defending Ollie since he is human garbage.
The cocaine came through Arkansas and Clinton had something to do with it? You got a source for this?
Rush Limbaugh’s ass.
From wikipedia, look there to chase footnotes for sources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking_allegations
Several journalists state that the CIA used Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport in Arkansas to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the Contras in Nicaragua, and drugs back into the United States.[27][28] Some theories have claimed the involvement of political figures Oliver North, then vice president and former CIA director George H. W. Bush and then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.[28][29]
Wow, did you read any of that. Ctl-f "Clinton " in that wiki article. Zero.
Judicial Watch (great source) is trying crazy hard in that article to suggest that judicial watch is saying there is a connection but they seem have nothing. Serious, they reference themselfs. It reads like a twelve year old with a clear bias wrote it. He was governor at the time. If you want to claim more, show real evidence. Your feeling don’t count, snowflake.
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You’re affirming that your statement regarding Bill Clinton is a meaningless inclusion.
Then why include it in your comment at all?
I’d love to know!
Please tell me why you thought a statement that strung unrelated pieces of information together without establishing a relationship between them or drawing a conclusion about their relationship was a worthwhile contribution to the discourse.When pressed, you linked to sources without elaborating your position or reason for linking to them.
Was that intentional? Did you mean to give any person who might engage with you a completely blank slate, in which you could then simply accuse them of arguing against something you had not actually asserted?
Bait them into making a straw man argument, and insinuate that validates the premise you still have not stated?I am curious how this conversation thread would have gone if you had actually stated your premise so others could dismiss it as its own logical fallacy: correlation is not causation.
But noooo, I had to read through someone putting forth genuine effort to call you on your nonsense while you offered low quality, dishonest responses that use the same sort of shifty rhetorical techniques that “journalists” employ on rage-bait news-otainment TV programs.And then - after the self-adulatory statements, pseudo-intellectual nonsense, and pointless insults - you claim the links you shared which do not support your implied premise are proof that you have adequately supported your not-claims? Weak.
Wow, you got me. So facts. Much conclusion. Argument. 100. Winning.
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None of that really provides any evidence that Bill Clinton was involved. Is Clinton being the governor germane or are you just stating random facts?
It doesn’t provide evidence because it has to do with the fact it happened in Mena, AK. And Bill Clinton was the Governor at the time.
Appearently stating a fact triggered the fuck out of this thread. It’s so stupid too because there are people (maybe you are in this category, maybe not - and this is not an insult so don’t take it as such) who weren’t born at the time he was Governor or even when he was President and wouldn’t know or care.
Where I went wrong was I forgot that facts aren’t facts to the Redditors here and they are frothing at the mouth waiting to make up strawmen arguments, argue in bad faith and unleash their vitriol over a it.
That being said, thank you for an honest question. Here is the answer and a link for further reading:
Bill Clinton served as the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001) and as the 40th and 42nd governor of Arkansas (1979–1981; 1983–1992).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Bill_Clinton
You attempt to involve Clinton in the smuggling failed. Do everyone, including yourself, a favor and just delete your comment.
He provided sources. While there’s nothing definitive pinning most of the accused, that’s by design. Successful criminals don’t take notes at a criminal conspiracy.
Let’s be clear, Clinton was better than many Republicans before him. Better than all that came after him. But that’s not an achievement. It’s a bar so ridiculously low it’s hard to even trip on.
You funny.
By your logic, everyone in New York on 9/11 is a potential co-conspirator.
“They were there, and they don’t have proof they weren’t involved!”
Technically Reagan started closing mental institutions while he was governor of California. He promised to open up alternatives and never did. It was a popular action that started when “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” showed abuse in the mental health system and the new system was suppose to have fixed those issues.
This is the problem, is that mental health abuses still happen today in whats left of mental health system in america.
We don’t need to tear it down, we need a federal oversight authority with balls and power to revoke licenses, issue massive fines, etc etc, with the funding and manpower to randomly inspect these facilities and interview patients at the drop of a hat, at any time of year, possibly multiple times a year.
and we need massive incentives to get hordes of new people, doctors, nurses, therapists, etc, into education to become qualified in their respective fields to do these jobs, and the fair pay for them.
I don’t think we should call them mental health abuses. There is abuse in the mental health system.
mental health abuses
I prefer the term “perverse psychiatry”.
My point was only that Reagan didn’t destroy the mental health systems while he was president. If you try bringing that up to a supporter, they will try and gotcha you on it. The other stuff was just to give some context as to why he was able to get away with it. Republicans never let a tragedy go to waste.
California was the first state to start dismantling their mental health systems and other states followed their lead, so most of the blame is still on him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
Repealed by Reagan.
I think any institution where an individual has power over others is going to have some twisted, bad apples in there. Everyone I know knows someone who had a teacher in school go out their way to harm a child… Always for no other reason than personal gratification and bitterness. I absolutely believe there were and still are Nurse Ratcheds out there.
which is why you need well funded, well manned, aggressive oversigh with the power to issue immediate fines, revoke licenses, etc.
An imperfect solution where a perfect solution does not exist. Highly susceptible to corruption and waste, but I sure as heck would vote for it!
Being out on the street is undoubtedly bad but you should not be clamoring to return to the days of stuffing homeless people into mental institutions. Indefinite involuntary commitment without trial or appeal is barbaric and that’s setting aside the kind of “treatments” they used and what they considered “disorders”.
Please, just give them homes.
I’m with you that the state should provide housing for them.
But schizophrenia is a serious disease and is prevalent (20%) in this group. Those people need psychiatric help. Only a home won’t fix it.
I do not think an elevated incidence of a specific mental illness among a population makes it justifiable to legalize throwing them all into indefinite psychiatric detention without oversight or trial. I’m all for having facilities where schizophrenic people can get care they need in a safe environment. I’m not for using those institutions as homeless storage facilities because people can’t separate homelessness from mental illness in their head. You can and should address both separately.
Nobody wants to stash all homeless people in psychiatric care, unlimited at that. That would overload their capacity thousandfold and makes no sense, this shit is expensive. Right now it seems you’re pushing some kind of narrative… Can you back up your claims?
What claims are you asking me to back up specifically? The meme above is evidence enough that people believe institutions are an appropriate solution to homelessness, but if you’re looking for more evidence of those claims: you can find plenty such arguments in a cursory google search.
Any such policy would be de-facto unlimited because homeless people don’t stop being homeless when you discharge them from an institution. You could just have them committed again.
B-But why would we waste taxpayer money into improving the welfare of the people?
There’s a middle ground, isn’t there? Like there are people out there that won’t get better without forced intervention. It’s not electroshock or nothing, we have more knowledge about proper humane treatment now.
The middle ground is give them homes and counseling. Not give people an easy way to shove the problem out of sight while creating another private prison industry.
Not all homeless are mentally ill. Asylums are not a place for people without homes. The notion that every person living on the street has something wrong with them that will fix their homelessness if you treat it is absurd, dangerous, and insulting.
we have more knowledge about proper humane treatment now.
They thought what they were doing at the time was proper and humane, too. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness until 1973. Conversion therapy is still a thing. How many modern-day therapists do you think would try to “treat” a homeless trans person who winds up in their asylum?
That’s fair. I do also believe in just giving people homes and therapy. I also think that there are people who need more help than just that.
There are, absolutely, but that’s something you could say about both housed and unhoused. Those concerns should be kept separated. Conflating mental illness with homelessness just causes stigma and gives people an excuse to pretend like the cause, and thus solution, lies within the individuals who end up homeless rather than how society is structured and governed.
In Europe they have sanitariums which I think can help keep people safe without them being prisoners.
Locally there is just social safety net after safety net. If you talk to any homeless that are left over, they have moral differences and reject the help or care, or they are not homeless just addicted and need the extra money from begging to pay for more highs. They go back to their managed group home for dinner and lodging.
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Give everyone homes and you prevent a lot more problems as well.
Right to housing would help so many people better their lives by leaving bad situations they are only in because they don’t have any where else.
We would all benefit by not having to suffer just to have a safe place to sleep. We wouldnt have to enslave ourselves to other people or employers and could make better choices for our lives(even though people will still make bad choices)
Sorry, but this is idealistic hogwash. Giving people homes does not solve debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia, nor does it solve drug addiction.
Housing should be universal, but rehabilitation of some sort is needed for a large plurality of homeless people and just throwing them into an apartment does not heal social ills.
Throwing homeless people into asylums doesn’t solve homelessness unless you intend to keep them there forever. Mental illness is over represented in homeless populations but correlation is not causation. Homelessness is not a mental illness.
Using due process to put people (housed or not) with serious mental illnesses into a dedicated care facility is fine. Suggesting that all homeless belong in there as a matter of policy is just an excuse to sweep them out of sight without solving any underlying issues by just assuming that the underlying issues are all mental illness.
Using due process to put people (housed or not) with serious mental illnesses into a dedicated care facility is fine.
That’s my point. My desire is a system where the homeless are assisted in transition back to normal life, including rehab if they’re suffering from addiction.
I don’t believe all the ills of the homeless are tied to mental illness.
Then I’m not really sure what your point has to do with mine. What you’re describing is not what Regan destroyed through deinstitutionalization, and I wouldn’t really call a system like that a “mental institution”.
This is not to mention how the war on drugs lead to massive effects on vital industries such as hemp
Big Oil had a big part in banning hemp. Hemp rope was used in boat docking and nylon rope ended up replacing it.
That reminds me I wanted to look up if the non drug use parts of marijuana plants can be processed into fabric too or if it’s any different. Like 20 years ago when google still worked. I forgot though. Also if marijuana seeds are the same food wise as hemp seeds. probably not worth the price though
Although the two plants are of the same species, hemp plants grown for fiber used to make rope are different from marijuana plants grown for flowers that produce THC (the “drug part”) in many physiological and practical ways. As different as a wolf from a shih tzu, or a crabapple from a honeycrisp.
For the most part, THC is produced in the flower of the cannabis plant. Most cannabis plants are either male or female (not both), and only female plants produce flowers.
Since hemp plants are cultivated for fiber, they usually have thick, strong, stalks. It’s better to grow them taller as opposed to wider, to fit more plants in a field. Both male and female plants can be used for fiber. Female hemp plants do grow small flowers, and those flowers do produce small amounts of THC, but not enough to be worth harvesting. Legally, modern hemp plants grown for fiber have less than one third of one percent THC content.
Since marijuana plants are cultivated for flowers, they usually have multiple, branching stalks, and they often spread and grow bushy at the top. It’s better to grow them wider as opposed to taller, so each plant can spread out and produce multiple flower stalks. The thin, branching stalks of these relatively short female marijuana plants could be used for fiber, but there’s probably not enough material there to be worth the effort. Meanwhile, many producers claim their marijuana flower to have 25% THC content or more.
It’s thought that cannabis flowers produce THC for at least two reasons. One is that the compound is sticky and helps hold on to pollen that might drift past from nearby male plants. Another reason is that it acts as a sunscreen for the flowers. The flowers produce THC to capture pollen, and also to protect themselves from the sun when they are wide open and waiting for the pollen to come.
Cannabis seeds don’t contain any THC (except whatever small amount may be left over from the flowers that produced them). All else being equal, the seeds of a hemp plant and the seeds of a marijuana plant should have the same value as a food source or industrial resource. Seeds from marijuana plants are rarer, though not necessarily more valuable.
One reason marijuana seeds are rare is that cannabis flowers produce way more THC when they are left unfertilized. The plant is producing THC in order to attract pollen, so as long as there is no pollen around, the plant just keeps producing more THC. It is by far most efficient to keep THC-producing female plants isolated from male plants. But this means those flowers are never fertilized and never produce any new seeds.
Long ago, it was common for marijuana bud to have seeds. Cannabis flowers grown outdoors are much more difficult to keep from being fertilized. Seedless marijuana bud, “sinsemilla,” was an uncommon treat for many illicit cannabis consumers in the '70s, '80s, or even into the '90s. More recently, relaxed legal regulation and technological advances have made controlled indoor marijuana growing much easier and more effective, and much more common. These days the paradigm has flipped, and it’s highly unusual (and maybe a little insulting) to find seeds in any flower purchased for THC consumption.
Thanks. I only knew about THC difference between them and wasn’t sure if the other details were as different as your examples or similar along the lines of the nutritional value of many cabbage plants being similar.
Hemp can be manufactured into clothing or ropes. The problem is, that basically nobody does this. And hemp and marijuana seeds are the same, except for the THC(not to sure if the seeds contain THC)
Industrial hemp is a roughly $6 Billion dollar industry, globally. Relatively small, but certainly significant, and forecasted to grow around 20% annually through 2030.
Yeah, but the market for hemp clothes is relatively small. Hemp gets used for a lot of other products, but not that much in clothing.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up your claim?
Deregulation of rails also had massive effects down the line. There was a lot of consolidation that just made everything significantly more expensive and caused us to be more dependent on oil thanks to the massive rise in the trucking industry
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to support your claim?
The deregulation was kind of inevitable. It was a bad time for railroads before it and it was a slightly less bad time for railroads after it.
I strongly suspect that in the long run the solution will be to nationalize the rails and signaling then license private companies to run on them
Except now train travel is a joke and building out high-speed rail is nearly impossible
The big thing that killed passenger rail in America was the US Postal Service ending it’s contracts with railroads for mail services. Before that they paid a significant sum to railroads to run an RPO (railroad post office) on the trains to sort and deliver mail along the line. Simply running an RPO would be net enough income to keep woefully underutilized passenger services profitable. RPO service ended in 1978 but was in decline before then due to shifting the sorting and transport to sorting facilities and trucks respectively
It’s no wonder the top 1% own such a large percent of the wealth when they are being taxed so little. Why give your employees a raise when you can take in a massive bonus with very little tax liability instead?
You’ve got cause and effect backwards. They are the 1% because they own such a large percent of the wealth.
Low taxes just help to maintain and widen the gap.
The gap is the problem. There will always be a 1%. That’s basic statistics. The problem is how far away that 1% is from the median.
Taxing accrued wealth, and closing loopholes for using wealth to leverage loans and avoiding income tax, increasing taxes for the highest income earners, reducing tax for everyone for lower brackets, taxing housing sales heavily when not your primary residence, same for running costs so as to not make rentals too lucrative.
Do all of these, and you’ll have a lot more budget to also fix a lot of the other inequality issues… Not that anything of this really matters in the long run, since will capitalism will happily gouge natural resources until it’s not profitable to do so. So, do all of the above, and also offset the destruction of natural resources with regulations and further taxation.
Ps: The word tax has been mentioned 6 times, which will likely upset some people. However, this would arguably be good for most Americans. And just… Less good for the obscenely rich. Everyone should want that trade. Even the very rich should want that… except for the sociopathic ones, they don’t have the ability to understand why that would be a net good change.
With you up until the property tax thing.
Short of fully subsidized housing, there will always be a demand for rental properties. And even then…socialized housing would just make renting the premium option for people who can’t wait their turn. You’d end up with either premium apartments, or a lot of “Extended Stay” hotels.
Giant companies buying up properties and letting them sit vacant in order to game the unit costs of rentals are a problem.
Small independent landlords are not. Their services will always be needed as long as there’s a commercial housing market. And housing is historically a very safe place to invest savings for a lot of middle class Americans. Taxing rental properties is fine, but is should be a progressive tax on number of units, with some sort of a penalty for a large percentage of vacant unit-months. Otherwise such a tax ends up seriously fucking a lot of hardworking middle class Americans.
but… trickle down economics…
Whatever is trickling down is yellow and smells bad…
But at least it’s warm
But I bet he made a lot of money while doing that.
The only comment that even attempts to debunk anything while offering sources is buried by downvotes. This community is badly in need of moderation.
You’re not wrong, but as it’s literally been six months since anyone posted anything here I’ve decided to let the discussion continue as long as the topic stays on Regan’s presidency.
What comment is that? Not seeing it.
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That would be a good counterpoint. Even better if you could find some a source or two to support it 😎
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Not sure how that relates to your previous comment, but interesting nonetheless.
Too many conversations at one time! Lol
I scrolled through every comment looking because I thought you had seen one. Did I miss it?
Because they’re not entirely accurate. And the ratio of downvotes to upvotes should’ve sparked skepticism. The replies point out why it’s not completely accurate.
Over-moderation is exactly why we’re here. I’m not so quick to ask for people to do my fact-checking for me. You probably shouldn’t be, either. I don’t want a mod making that decision.
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Doesn’t seem to be the case here
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Nice b8 m8.
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You’re not wrong!
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