Romney vs. Obama Debate - Part II on Tuesday - let's score it!

[TitoFan]

[Mars_ax]

It's been fun, hasn't it?

With Election Day coming up, my only regret is that after the elections these mega-threads on Obama vs Romney will dry up and go away. There won't be anything for @El Kabong, @VictorCharlie, and @Kirkland Laing to argue about anymore. (Oh yeah... me too).

That will only leave boxing, and the occasional "How many nipples do you have" thread.

This is never ending, after the election the bitching starts about who won or lost.

[Kirkland Laing]

There has been a reduction in federal money to universities since the 80s but it was in research not the general funds that run the university. And yeah us Libertarians like to tell our children how price will outpace inflation for highly subsidized goods as a boogie man bedtime story. I got to say I'm a little disappointed in your retorts lack of graphs. Come on Kirk you know I'm a simple Soldier. You got to give to me barney style.

I think you under estimate the American voter. Sure both the current candidates are too cowardly to mention significant reform to entitlement spending b/c no one wants to be the first to tell our seniors that the party is over. I'm not interested in another discussion with you about the sustainability of SS and Medicaire but if you believe that they are a major contributor to our debt/deficit and more importantly unfunded future liabilities then you have to agree something needs to be done to either better fund them, reform them or replace them. I think a candidate that was able to articulate the problem, a solution and then point out how complicit the major parties have been in kicking the can down the road would do quite well.

There's been massive underfunding and cutting of funding for state universities at federal and state level since the 1980s. For some reason the funding cuts co-incided with the increase in tuition costs. The words that do come out of your virtual mouth happen to co-incide the things the think tanks and individuals funded by corporations and billonaires have been propagating for the last few decades.

Social security and medicare are the third rail of American politics. Massive majorities of the public don't want to see cuts in these programmes. Any politician advocating scrapping them is dead in the water.

Social security doesn't really need to be reformed anytime soon. Solving Medicare cost growth problems would solve the long term federal deficit overnight and I already explained to you how easy it would be to do.

Also, too. Ron Paul and his ilk want to "reform" medicare and ss by scrapping them and leaving over 65s at the mercy of the private sector. This is, nationally speaking, a 48 state election-losing position to take.

[Kirkland Laing]

Oh it's Reagan's fault....well that's new and refreshing

It's also Bush and Bush the Lesser's fault and Clinton's fault. It's also the fault of America's first Kenyan president.

What the Kenyan should really have done is set up a system where every toddler has access to daycare centres staffed by teachers who have at least a master's degree in under-5s education. Then they should go to a school where all teachers should have at least a master's degree in teaching. Then they should be able to go to a university where they recieve the best possible education or vocational colleges for the non-academic where they learn a trade or skills to get them skilled employment. All this from daycare to graduation should be free and the people who make it to university/vocational college should be given a monthly payment to cover their living expenses for their two/four/six year courses. This would give everybody in the country equality of opportunity and would create a massive increase in social mobility compared to the current system.

When they leave school they should be able to have generous welfare payments when they go through periods of unemployment, they should have excellent completely free healthcare from cradle to grave and they should be able to pay into a generous state pension plan that gives them a comfortable retirement. And they should get six weeks holiday a year and be able to refuse overtime, an excellent minimum wage and strong unions to keep working wages at a good level.

[El Kabong]

Oh it's Reagan's fault....well that's new and refreshing

It's also Bush and Bush the Lesser's fault and Clinton's fault. It's also the fault of America's first Kenyan president.

What the Kenyan should really have done is set up a system where every toddler has access to daycare centres staffed by teachers who have at least a master's degree in under-5s education. Then they should go to a school where all teachers should have at least a master's degree in teaching. Then they should be able to go to a university where they recieve the best possible education or vocational colleges for the non-academic where they learn a trade or skills to get them skilled employment. All this from daycare to graduation should be free and the people who make it to university/vocational college should be given a monthly payment to cover their living expenses for their two/four/six year courses. This would give everybody in the country equality of opportunity and would create a massive increase in social mobility compared to the current system.

When they leave school they should be able to have generous welfare payments when they go through periods of unemployment, they should have excellent completely free healthcare from cradle to grave and they should be able to pay into a generous state pension plan that gives them a comfortable retirement. And they should get six weeks holiday a year and be able to refuse overtime, an excellent minimum wage and strong unions to keep working wages at a good level.

I see you blaming a lot of people and as for your "solution" to the issue......that's just fucking ridiculous #1 That's way too expensive there's not enough money to pay for it and even if you taxed the fuck out of everything you couldn't make that work and #2 That has the all the makings of a tyranny and I'd oppose it with every last fiber of my being. If the government controls all of that then the government controls your life, your job, your education, your health, and what's stopping them from controlling everything else, what you eat when you go to the bathroom, how much power you're allowed to use in your house, etc.

[Kirkland Laing]

Oh it's Reagan's fault....well that's new and refreshing

It's also Bush and Bush the Lesser's fault and Clinton's fault. It's also the fault of America's first Kenyan president.

What the Kenyan should really have done is set up a system where every toddler has access to daycare centres staffed by teachers who have at least a master's degree in under-5s education. Then they should go to a school where all teachers should have at least a master's degree in teaching. Then they should be able to go to a university where they recieve the best possible education or vocational colleges for the non-academic where they learn a trade or skills to get them skilled employment. All this from daycare to graduation should be free and the people who make it to university/vocational college should be given a monthly payment to cover their living expenses for their two/four/six year courses. This would give everybody in the country equality of opportunity and would create a massive increase in social mobility compared to the current system.

When they leave school they should be able to have generous welfare payments when they go through periods of unemployment, they should have excellent completely free healthcare from cradle to grave and they should be able to pay into a generous state pension plan that gives them a comfortable retirement. And they should get six weeks holiday a year and be able to refuse overtime, an excellent minimum wage and strong unions to keep working wages at a good level.

I see you blaming a lot of people and as for your "solution" to the issue......that's just fucking ridiculous #1 That's way too expensive there's not enough money to pay for it and even if you taxed the fuck out of everything you couldn't make that work and #2 That has the all the makings of a tyranny and I'd oppose it with every last fiber of my being. If the government controls all of that then the government controls your life, your job, your education, your health, and what's stopping them from controlling everything else, what you eat when you go to the bathroom, how much power you're allowed to use in your house, etc.

In Finland's Footsteps

[El Kabong]

In Finland's Footsteps

How high are their taxes?

[VictorCharlie]

There has been a reduction in federal money to universities since the 80s but it was in research not the general funds that run the university. And yeah us Libertarians like to tell our children how price will outpace inflation for highly subsidized goods as a boogie man bedtime story. I got to say I'm a little disappointed in your retorts lack of graphs. Come on Kirk you know I'm a simple Soldier. You got to give to me barney style.

I think you under estimate the American voter. Sure both the current candidates are too cowardly to mention significant reform to entitlement spending b/c no one wants to be the first to tell our seniors that the party is over. I'm not interested in another discussion with you about the sustainability of SS and Medicaire but if you believe that they are a major contributor to our debt/deficit and more importantly unfunded future liabilities then you have to agree something needs to be done to either better fund them, reform them or replace them. I think a candidate that was able to articulate the problem, a solution and then point out how complicit the major parties have been in kicking the can down the road would do quite well.

There's been massive underfunding and cutting of funding for state universities at federal and state level since the 1980s. For some reason the funding cuts co-incided with the increase in tuition costs. The words that do come out of your virtual mouth happen to co-incide the things the think tanks and individuals funded by corporations and billonaires have been propagating for the last few decades.

Social security and medicare are the third rail of American politics. Massive majorities of the public don't want to see cuts in these programmes. Any politician advocating scrapping them is dead in the water.

Social security doesn't really need to be reformed anytime soon. Solving Medicare cost growth problems would solve the long term federal deficit overnight and I already explained to you how easy it would be to do.

Also, too. Ron Paul and his ilk want to "reform" medicare and ss by scrapping them and leaving over 65s at the mercy of the private sector. This is, nationally speaking, a 48 state election-losing position to take.

Show me a source documenting the decrease in federal money allocated to state universities general fund since 1980. Not research money or grants but money that goes towards paying for teachers salaries and keeping the lights on directly from the Feds to the school.

I know how you like graphs. Here is one from the guys at Freakanomics

[Kirkland Laing]

In Finland's Footsteps

How high are their taxes?

The same as yours if you add on what you pay for healthcare, daycare and all the other stuff you have to pay for in America.

[Kirkland Laing]

There has been a reduction in federal money to universities since the 80s but it was in research not the general funds that run the university. And yeah us Libertarians like to tell our children how price will outpace inflation for highly subsidized goods as a boogie man bedtime story. I got to say I'm a little disappointed in your retorts lack of graphs. Come on Kirk you know I'm a simple Soldier. You got to give to me barney style.

I think you under estimate the American voter. Sure both the current candidates are too cowardly to mention significant reform to entitlement spending b/c no one wants to be the first to tell our seniors that the party is over. I'm not interested in another discussion with you about the sustainability of SS and Medicaire but if you believe that they are a major contributor to our debt/deficit and more importantly unfunded future liabilities then you have to agree something needs to be done to either better fund them, reform them or replace them. I think a candidate that was able to articulate the problem, a solution and then point out how complicit the major parties have been in kicking the can down the road would do quite well.

There's been massive underfunding and cutting of funding for state universities at federal and state level since the 1980s. For some reason the funding cuts co-incided with the increase in tuition costs. The words that do come out of your virtual mouth happen to co-incide the things the think tanks and individuals funded by corporations and billonaires have been propagating for the last few decades.

Social security and medicare are the third rail of American politics. Massive majorities of the public don't want to see cuts in these programmes. Any politician advocating scrapping them is dead in the water.

Social security doesn't really need to be reformed anytime soon. Solving Medicare cost growth problems would solve the long term federal deficit overnight and I already explained to you how easy it would be to do.

Also, too. Ron Paul and his ilk want to "reform" medicare and ss by scrapping them and leaving over 65s at the mercy of the private sector. This is, nationally speaking, a 48 state election-losing position to take.

Show me a source documenting the decrease in federal money allocated to state universities general fund since 1980. Not research money or grants but money that goes towards paying for teachers salaries and keeping the lights on directly from the Feds to the school.

I know how you like graphs. Here is one from the guys at Freakanomics

The federal government transfers money to state government for various reasons. Mostly Medicaid and similar programmes, but federal aid to states was generally cut back from Reagan onwards and one of the ways the states dealt with this was to cut state funding gor universities which meant the costs of education have been increasingly transferred to students.

[VictorCharlie]

Come on Kirk. You would never allow Lyle or myself to make a statement like that w/o supporting facts. So please show me a supporting document that describes the amount of federal money that a state was using specifically for their Universities/Colleges general funds and the amount it has decreased by since 1980.

[El Kabong]

In Finland's Footsteps

How high are their taxes?

The same as yours if you add on what you pay for healthcare, daycare and all the other stuff you have to pay for in America.

So higher then?

[Kirkland Laing]

Come on Kirk. You would never allow Lyle or myself to make a statement like that w/o supporting facts. So please show me a supporting document that describes the amount of federal money that a state was using specifically for their Universities/Colleges general funds and the amount it has decreased by since 1980.

The fact is that since Reagan there have been massive cuts of federal funding to states and one of the ways that states have made up the funding gap is by charging higher and higher tuition fees :

Once elected, Mr. Reagan set the educational tone for his administration by:

a. calling for an end to free tuition for state college and university students,
b. annually demanding 20% across-the-board cuts in higher education funding,[2]
c. repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses
d. engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University of California, and
e. declaring that the state "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity,[3]"



http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reagan.html


So how about that. It turns out it's a conservative aim to end free tuition to state universities as part of the conservative war on education (Reagan having run on a platform of abolishing the Department of Education in 1980) and when they finally do succeed in passing the cost of tuition from the state to students they then turn round and say it's government subsidies that are causing the problem.





Also, too, a more detailed look at the whole thing :


http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/from-master-plan-to-no-plan-the-slow-death-of-public-higher-education

[Kirkland Laing]

In Finland's Footsteps

How high are their taxes?

The same as yours if you add on what you pay for healthcare, daycare and all the other stuff you have to pay for in America.

So higher then?

No, the same as you currently spend for the same services. Except your services are shit by comparison. Finland actually spends a lot less than America on healthcare and on education but their education system is one of the top two or three in the world while America is mid-table. Same thing for healthcare. There must be something good about those socialist systems, no?

[El Kabong]

In Finland's Footsteps

How high are their taxes?

The same as yours if you add on what you pay for healthcare, daycare and all the other stuff you have to pay for in America.

So higher then?

No, the same as you currently spend for the same services. Except your services are shit by comparison. Finland actually spends a lot less than America on healthcare and on education but their education system is one of the top two or three in the world while America is mid-table. Same thing for healthcare. There must be something good about those socialist systems, no?

NationMaster - Taxation stats: Finland vs United States

So higher then?

If you admit the services Americans get are "shit by comparison" why the hell would you want higher taxes to make the United States a welfare state like Finland when our services don't work well to begin with? Do you see the flaw in your arguments No I don't suspect you do....the welfare state can do no wrong in your eyes...I on the other hand like to take care of myself