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Since some conservatives wanted to argue the issues, here they are, and why I think you are ruining the country.

It's amazing that it's only been 3 months and you can tell objectively and surely that the country is being ruined.

I think your list is generally too long. Taxing and regulations should not be the de facto reaction of government to a problem. Moral laws should not exist. Defense of our nation should be the government's highest priority, as well as protecting the freedoms of our constitution. Law enforcement, and infrastructure, both necessary. Education should be provided for, more locally the better. The government should stay out of most of the rest, unless shit hits the fan somewhere and we can vote on it.

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Abortion: Nobody likes abortion, but conservative politicians love to divide us on emotional issues. Keep abortion safe and legal, otherwise we have back alley abortions which kill moms. Promote a sex education based on facts instead of christian morality. Teach kids how to have safe sex, and then provide contraception to all women for free. You'll have less abortion, less poverty, and a more productive population of women. All of my position is based on research which I'd be happy to cite. Plenty of states have tried everything and now we have the best solution.

I don't think that we should be either creating moral laws or forcing people to do something they don't want to. There has to be a limit very early in the pregnancy, but I don't really like arguing the abortion issue, it seems more like a personal issue to me, and I think we have it more or less under control.

On the other hand, the government has no business in sex education or providing contraception. We can manage our personal selves and our families just fine without the help of government, thanks.

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Fiscal responsibility: Government spends too much money, and takes in too little money. People are too goddamn selfish, and taxes are not evil. We should hike taxes on wealthy individuals, and run the government more efficiently. I think we should take a hard look at how much $$ we spend on corporate welfare, and high income welfare (thinking mortgage deduction). If we wanna let capitalism decide winners and losers, then we need to stop funding the losers. However I admit that I don't understand all of the details behind farm subsidies etc. Insurance programs to keep the country running may not be a bad idea. I would need to know more.

I agree that the government spends too much money. I agree tax loopholes and special interest lobbying for large corporations is a problem. I would say that preventing corporations from being able to contribute to political campaigns might be a good thing, but even better would be to simplify the tax codes to simply get rid of all theses exceptions and loopholes for which the corporations lobby in the first place.

Progressive taxes are probably a good thing, but we have to be careful to not use taxing the wealthy as a cure-all for having a bad fiscal policy in the first place. HRC's campaign was cringe-worthy in this aspect, and her tax the wealthy bullshit was too over the to for me, and I'm glad that a lot of people saw through it. Because it's a slippery slope.

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Defense: Cut spending dramatically. Use the gifts our research and development has created to run our military more efficiently. Reduce our presence around the world and isolate ourselves from unilateral engagements. Let the world decide together to do shit. Empathize with the folks who hate our guts enough so we understand what the fuck they're blowing us up over and then consider stop doing the shit (occupation, meddling, regime changing) that makes folks hate our guts.

The government's primary role is to protect our sovereignty and freedom. I wish we wouldn't fight all of these proxy wars and constant wars in the Middle East. It's fucking ridiculous and we all know it. But we need to be able to project our force quickly and efficiently if a nation is building to threaten us. Nuclear proliferation is also something that we should always be concerned about, and a strong military is the one thing that can really prevent this. I don't think we want to see more countries enriching uranium without thinking about the consequences.

The defense budget is fine, we do need to get more value out of our tax dollars though, and not let the defense contractors run the show.

It's not in my nature to empathize with folks who hate my guts, especially if they wish my family or neighbors or friends harm. I don't really get this way of thinking.

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Regulation: Smack the fuck out of wall street, banks, and companies who are abusing their position to fuck over Americans. Regulation is the only way that capitalism can be prevented from annihilating us. Make your shit, sell your shit, but don't be so fucking greedy. Look at helping out small businesses navigate regulations. I'd like to see a better checks and balances system invented. Regulation seems too reactive and shitty and harmful to business newcomers. Some regulations are shitty. Some are not. Again, not a simple problem.

I'm not sure what you mean by smacking the fuck out of banks and companies. "Don't be so fucking greedy" is a pretty .. I hate to say, ignorant view of capitalism. Greed is such a subjective term. Unfair monopolies and such should be prevented via regulation only when it harms the citizens directly, not because we feel someone is making too much money, or getting too greedy. Greed is a valid impetus for capitalism. However, it's the free market that should curb the greed through competition, not regulation. Again, in cases where competition is not possible due to monopoly, this is where regulation can be applied.

It's never a problem for small business to navigate regulations if regulations aren't so overarching in the first place. My only guess on what you really mean is that regulations should protect the small business, not empower large corporations. If that's what you're saying, then I could probably agree.

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Education: Lots of people in America are lazy and want a fast solution for nothing. Education is the long term investment in the country's future. College has got to be cheaper. For-profit schools need to go away. Public schools need to be improved, and any private religious school who wants tax dollars can go fuck themselves. Any kid who applies themselves should be incentivized with cheap higher education, and quality job opportunities.

I can't really argue with any of this. If I were being selfish, I would prefer private religious schools do get tax dollars, because this is where I need to send my children in lieu of any actual decent public education in my area, but if the public system was working properly I agree it wouldn't be necessary. Education should be less regulated federally, and more controlled locally, which would solve some (but not all) of our issues with public k-12 education. I won't get into local/state issues here in California with public education because I don't think it has as much to do with the nation at large, but they are many and severe.

And for sure, we need to figure out how to make college cheaper, which probably implies expanding more colleges and universities.

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Health care: Single payer system - people gotta stop abusing the system and going to the hospital for an MRI and a catscan whenever they get a splinter. Incentivize people who are making the right healthy choices with a smaller contribution. Let algorithms decide where and how to run hospitals.

We'll have to somehow start over from scratch on the whole system in order for anyone to be happy. I'm not confident in the government to be able to pull this off, although in theory, this is probably where we end up in 20 or 50 years. The insurance companies have too firm a hold on the industry right now and my fear is that (with a single payer system) we end up with the government (aka taxpayers) funding the insurance companies to do the same damn thing they are doing now, but within a government-subsidized system. I'm afraid it would be sold this way once democrats come into power. However, I'm not optimistic that Republicans can come up with anything much better. I'd prefer status quo than a faulty single-payer for sure.

I would prefer if the doctors could charge market prices for things and we take the stranglehold of the insurance companies out of dictating prices, but I'm not sure how that works or how we get there.

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Environment: We've gotta reduce human population growth (see contraception and sex education), and then we've got to figure out how to conduct a human life without destroying the environment. We've gotta figure out how to replace coal. We've gotta manufacture more efficient houses that cost less than 200k. We've got to generate more electricity. We've got to replace internal combustion engines with electric motors. We've got to manufacture with less pollution, and we need sustainable resources which we can extract to sustain our energy needs. There's a lot of room for R&D and capitalism to work its magic here.

We don't really have a population growth problem here in the US, internally (edit to clarify: non-migration related), and we have a lot of room to grow. More sustainable energy is good, and I can't argue with any of that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2017 10:44PM by Jib.