Your political views....

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I stand corrected PM.

I would recommend you give the Republican Party another look, the Tea Party is doing some house cleaning, and we need to focus on not splitting the opposition vote.

Generally Democratic and liberal. Though I have supported most wars (cept the last one) and I find many on the far left to be just as offensive as the far right, if less dangerous.

There are elements of the Republican party that I have no problem with. There are other elements (the anti-science forces) that I consider to be very dangerous and offensive.

@ PM:
There's different degrees of libertarianism from bare minimum government to just simply smaller government. Being a libertarian doesn't mean you're absolutely against a safety net. I don't believe in abolishing welfare, but I do believe in making the eligibility stricter so that only those who are unable or highly impaired in functioning rather than unwilling should be eligible.

Social programs should be based on the principle of teaching a man to fish, not giving em a fish every day. Just like how math tutoring is designed to help you with the questions, not give you the answers.

Giving a fish a day instills dependence, whereas teaching how to fish instills autonomy. I'm not against getting help from society, as society is designed to secure our needs. I'm just against rewarding people for laziness.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 21 Jan 2011, 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I kinda made a promise to myself after leaving the dems that I would never vote for either one of the major parties, so I usually vote with the Indpendence Party, not Independent, Independence Party. If a third party is not on the ballot, I use the write-in spot and put "anyone else".

Everyone may now commence telling me that i'm "wasting my vote", HELLO, I HAVE A RIGHT TO DO THAT.

For those of you who don't know about the Independence party, here is some basic information:

Independence Party of America Wikipedia

The "fish" Philosophy works in most cases, but not all, it all depends on the situation. I agree that welfare eligibilty should be stricter in order to prevent "welfare queens". Those who commit welfare fraud should be locked up for a very very long time. I think some programs should stay and some should go.

I dont really fit well on the classic liberal to conservative spectrum. My fiscal views tend to be more liberal: I support a higher minimum wage, increased taxes on the rich, but i believe welfare ought to be re-examined. I made 15 thousand dollars last year, i cannot afford insurance and i cant qualify for medicaid. If obamacare goes through, i will be forced to buy my company h/c at 67 dollars a week with a 2500 dollar deductible. Welfare is being abused, yet people who genuinely need help cant get it.

When it comes to NAFTA and other globalistic efforts, i lean conservative, put americans back to work, quit outsourcing everything to india, quit borrowing from china (what an idiot move). The US should have no part in the United Nations or give any recognition to the European Union, they're pushing the New World Order.

On 99% of social issues, i am hardcore conservative: NO Abortions for ANY reason, the ACLU is a domestic terrorist group. Im pro death penalty for crimes like rape and murder, close the mexican border and send the anchor babies home with their mothers. I believe the statement from Leviticus regarding homosexuality, i believe evolution has no place in american schools, and the idea of man-made global warming is a joke, and reeks of arrogance.

My two social liberal leanings are unions and public transportation. I firmly believe in workers rights, and their right to organize to seek better wages and working conditions. I work 8 to 10 hour shifts in a convenience store without even a bathroom break, i have to wait til the store is empty and nobody is pumping gas. In Maine, the break/lunch law does not apply when fewer than three people are on duty, that should change.

I believe that public transportation should be better funded and accessible to more people. I do not have a car, and the buses in my city run from 6am to 6pm 6 days a week, im glad i live two blocks from work, but if there were a stronger PT system, my job opportunities would be much better.

Thats me in a nutshell...

You are NOT wasting your vote, you have the right to use it any way you please. I personally would join the Constitution Party, but you have to pay a fee to join.

The choices seem too vague. Its better if you focus on a particular issue. I picked middle of the road though.

There's really no reasonable way for government welfare to apply on a case-by-case basis. They have no incentives give good service, only a plethora of rules. You can see this in the government aid worker who tells a young, single, and penniless woman that she needs to get pregnant before they can give her any kind of assistance (true story).

Private donations and non-bureaucratic charities are ideal in that they allow the givers to make decisions to help people. I have hardly heard anyone weigh in on private charity without making the assumption that it is insufficient to satisfy all of the needs that exist. Is that really true? The Giving USA foundation estimated that charitable giving in 2008 was over $300 billion. Consider that that figure is on top of tax money allocated to welfare, and it looks like there is actually a great deal of money ready to help the less-fortunate.

Middle of the road here too. =.=

Well... no, the real reason why minimum wage isn't that effective as an anti-poverty initiative is because minimum wage laws are poorly targeted if the goal is actually impacting the poor. I already pointed out that the average recipient of the minimum wage is not a poor person at all, which, creates kind of a problem when stressing it as an anti-poverty initiative. Even further, if one doesn't have a job, as many poorer people might not, a high minimum wage isn't that big of an issue.

As for looking at the US economy itself, we both know that comparing the two is apples and oranges given that the US is currently in an economic recession. Of course, issues like that create all sorts of problems for economic comparison anyway. I will say that Australia seems to be an outlier in terms of the impact of the labor regulation, but I haven't studied all of the details of labor regulation to know why, but generally speaking, most nations have faced a trade-off between unemployment and wages, with the US and Britain accepting low wages, while Europe has generally accepted unemployment.

As it stands though, as a policy for improving the lot of the poor, I generally wouldn't focus on minimum wage laws. That would depend a lot more on employment than is ideal, and it is just so poorly aimed that most of the people impacted would not otherwise be poor. Ideas borrowing more from the negative income tax make more sense to me, as they actually transfer most of the money to the CORRECT parties.

I think I need to respond to the obvious logic error I think you are making in relation to the minimum wage. You have cited that the majority of people on the minimum wage are not poor. This may be true, the minimum wage is a 'minimum' and when it is as low as it presently is in the United States, this leaves a good deal of room for people who are paid above it but still fall into the 17% of Americans who live below the poverty line. I will not claim that it is a cure all, but as you have presented it, your logic is flawed.

As to Australia, we have chosen both, this creates inflationary pressures that must be alleviated through interest rates (they are still quite low here), this pushes up the costs of housing which in term cools inflation. This cannot continue forever and Australia will suffer harsh economic times, however Australia's banking regulations, low government debt, low unemployment and high foreign investment means we are well placed to absorb economic shocks (such as we did during the Asian Financial Crisis and now the Global Financial Crisis).

Awesomelyglorious: where is your source that minimum wage does not equal poor? I make 46 cents above minimum wage and am pretty much at the bottom of the barrel.

Many minimum-wage workers are students or in other situations where they are supplementing the income of a primary wage-earner, rather than actually trying to live off of minimum wage. I have had jobs that paid little better than minimum wage; I would not consider myself poor.

It is based upon past CBO studies, I can try to give you a link, but I gave up when I could not find the clearest presentation of the data I was seeking(I keep on finding an overly long paper by the CBO that is older than desired). The issue is households. A lot of minimum wage earners are members of households with other wage-earners.

not all of us are privileged, i have a friend who makes minimum wage at mcdonalds, and eats out of our dumpster at the convenience store. i feel like society is punishing us.