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12 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - About Those Gas Prices · 0 replies · +1 points

You still haven't cited any evidence of causation.

12 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - About Those Gas Prices · 2 replies · +1 points

"But I think the Federal Reserve also bears part of the responsibility by way of its Quantitative Easing Program."

But you haven't cited a single piece of evidence to support this.

12 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Budget Funds Actua... · 0 replies · +1 points

It is difficult to parse an argument that is primarly composed of lies and misinformation.

12 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Budget Funds Actua... · 1 reply · +1 points

"raising taxes doesn't actually increase revenue"

I think you misspelled "necessarily" here. You seem to be suggesting that cutting taxes is the only way to raise revenue, which is just silly.

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Budget Funds Actua... · 0 replies · +2 points

OK, I think you're making the ridiculous claim that raising taxes on the people who have the most money "wouldn't produce revenue" -- is that correct?

Say I'm a billionaire hedge fund manager who pays an effective tax rate of 15% on my absurdly enormous income. Why not raise that rate to something comparable to what a public school teacher pays, like 35%?

Personally, I'm in favor of adding a few more brackets to the top end, and raising the top marginal rate back to 50% or so -- still well short of the 90% it was in the boom times of the 50s and early 60s.

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Budget Funds Actua... · 1 reply · 0 points

What wouldn't produce revenue?

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Budget Funds Actua... · 2 replies · 0 points

"And “raising taxes” won’t really help us either."

False. Taxes for the wealthy are at extremely low levels, historically speaking, and there's no reason they couldn't be raised -- except that the wealthy have an inordinate amount of influence on policy-makers, not least because they count those policy makers as members of their own class.

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Young Democrat The... · 0 replies · +1 points

You're either widely missing the point, or maybe you think you've figured out another way to claim that liberals hate freedom. The argument, though, is not that history is beyond our control, but that there are historical forces that are within our control -- ie civil rights didn't just magically happen because white supremacists suddenly realized they were wrong, it took decades of organizing and activism.

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Young Democrat The... · 1 reply · +1 points

But they are not denying free will -- and the fact that you would try to make it into an argument about that suggests that you are tone-deaf and that you have no other argument.

13 years ago @ Carolina Review Daily - The Young Democrat The... · 2 replies · +1 points

I agree that building an argument on a foundation of "historical inevitability" is a little weak -- but your claim that it's a bad argument because it denies free will is pedantic and whiny and makes you sound like you're more interested in talking about semantics than debating policy.

I think you're missing the point here: "That presupposes first that there is a defined trajectory in history and second that this trajectory is on the side of the good" -- yes, exactly, because the YD argument is doing just that: defining a trajectory in history, with liberals on the side of freedom and progress, and conservatives on the side of fear, regression and reaction.

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