Can we agree that both parties have good points? (Obama, independent, solution)

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest

I will agree with anyone that thinks both parties are destroying America

What do you mean "both" parties? As far as I can tell there is only one.

[brokensky]

Originally Posted by Cindy_Jole

And both parties care more about the next election than the American people.

Although that sentiment is cynical, indeed, I do think it has the ring of truth to it overall. (Sadly)

[jwm1964]

Actually I'm pretty disgusted with both parties and think regardless of what they say, they pretty much stand for the same thing


the continued violent occupation of foreign countries . . .
the continued infringement on personal liberty and rights domestically . . .
unbridled expansion of Federal powers . . .
the xfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthy . . .


people are considered just another resource by our current government. Both parties are corrupt.

[tinman01]

Ill agree that both parties are the root cause of all this nations problems

[desertdetroiter]

Obviously both parties have some good points. I respect many aspects of conservatism. My problem with conservatives has little to do with it's basic philosophy and everything to do with a lot of the hostility towards minorities and the attempt to legislate based on the Bible.

[brokensky]

Originally Posted by desertdetroiter

Obviously both parties have some good points. I respect many aspects of conservatism. My problem with conservatives has little to do with it's basic philosophy and everything to do with a lot of the hostility towards minorities and the attempt to legislate based on the Bible.

I do understand what you are saying, but there is actually only a % of Conservatives who are THAT Conservative. However, they get all the publicity cause it is sensationalism at its best to hype up things and make it appear all Republicans want to repeal Roe v. Wade and are into Creationism.

And it seems things are often misunderstood when it comes to minorities. Although I am really turned off by folks who have lapsed into generational poverty and gaming the welfare system, my family and friends are the folks showing up to donate at Food Banks and write out the checks for the Salvation Army. Somehow, Republicans have gotten the reputation for being mean-spirited, yet it was under Bush I that volunteerism got a big boost in this country.

[laysayfair]

Originally Posted by Memphis1979

Lets look at the base argument of both sides.

Republicans - The base argument is that government can not create jobs, that only the private sector can create jobs. Any taxes taken away from the private sector will hurt private sector expansion, and therefore job growth

Democrats - The base argument is that the private sector has never been able to take care of all needs, and that the government does have to create some jobs and services.

This is, in essence, the boiled down difference between the parties.

I think we can all agree that more and more government jobs aren't a good idea. We need a lower corporate tax rate because ours is the highest in the world. Raising taxes on middle class Americans especially during a recession is a bad idea and will hurt the economy.

I think we can all agree that making massive cuts to programs is going to put people out of work. Without them working there will be less of a demand for goods and services from the government which will put many people out of work, not paying taxes, and hurt the economy.

Some programs like welfare, food stamps, etc are just going to be disagreed on. I myself have been a large proponent of cutting military spending. However I understand that our military employees a MASSIVE number of people, and that one of our number one exports is military exports in the means of F-15's, rifles, bullets, etc. Cutting it to much is going to hurt us.

So where do we find common ground. Both sides of the aisle have good points here. I know we need to work towards a balanced budget, even under the Ryan plan that would make seniors pay 65% of their own medicare expenses would have left a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit with current unemployment rates by 2021.

It appears that cutting programs is going to hurt jobs. It also appears that continuing government spending at massive levels is going to not encourage markets to invest and not create jobs. Even entitlements are used to inflate demand for products. Sure, some people will spend money on things they don't need, but many times those things do create jobs here in the states.

So saying all of that, how do we move forward. How do we pick this program over that. Even if all drugs were legalized it would mean that hundreds of thousands of DEA agents, police, prison guards, construction workers, people that supply the construction materials, the people that transport those materials, etc.

Like it or not, government spending does create jobs. But like it or not, government spending is to high, and raising taxes on most Americans is going to hurt everything also.

Where is the middle ground?

Let's identify the government programs that in the private sector would be prosecuted as "Ponzi Schemes" and get rid of them. Let's get the government out of the Ponzi-scheme business or let Maddox out of prison.

[Ferd]

If by democrats with good points you mean something Zell Miller would say then...maybe.

[Memphis1979]

So negative. The parties ideas aren't bad or evil. How they've been implemented yes, but not the base idea. Let's try and find the common ground, and work from there. There is positve common ground with both base ideals, but any ideology taken to far is bad.

[le roi]

Originally Posted by marcopolo

1. Could we just "get" the notion that people who spend their days doing NOTHING productive are draining our wealth away? How does digging holes and filling them in again improve us as a nation? Answer: it doesn't.

Problem is-

there are a lot of people who are unproductive in the private sector, and there are a lot of people who are productive, and creating wealth, in the public sector.

The other day I used ARPAnet as an example of public sector workers whose work created a lot of wealth. You can also use the uncompetitive "free" markets, like Time Warner, Comcast, Progress Energy, most insurance companies, Too Big to Fail Banks, the real estate sales industry, etc., as examples of private sector firms chock full of workers who drain the wealth of society, rather than create it.

I'm not real crazy about how the far right oversimplifies this. I consider anti-competitive "rentier capitalism" to be just as bad as "big government."

2. Could we demand that an independent arbiter put a jobs price tag on every proposed regulation or major bureaucratic decision? How many people would support the current energy policies if we all knew that they had cost us 200,000 jobs? How many people would support the EPA's offensives if they knew that 1 million jobs are at risk?

There's no way to do it independently. You'd be asking them to build a model, and every model has the bias of the model creator built in.

For example, when calculating the fiscal impact of the EPA, how do you calculate the jobs lost by allowing polluters to pollute, and then having to tax people to clean it up? There's no good way to quantify that.