Ben___Garrison
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
Here's the summary of the bill, and here's the full text. Can you point out what specifically you object to? I've been accused of being uncharitable on this topic before, but whenever I press for details I typically get little but handwavey "Biden bad" style arguments. Which, to be clear, he was bad early in his presidency on this topic, but then he did an about-face and has signaled that he would have used the law quite aggressively.
Too much discretion.
Most of the bill is funding increases or rules changes that have little discretion involved. The big point of discretion was the Border Emergency Authority, which could be used if there were an average of 4000-5000 immigrants per day, and must be used at 5000+.
Formalized a lot of bad things like the asylum system
What is this referring to? The US already has formalized laws on asylum, like its signature on the Convention Against Torture. Right now, a big loophole in immigration is that immigrants can stay in the country until their asylum application is heard by a court, but courts are clogged and they often just miss their appointment anyways. The law would have plugged that.
Trump as POTUS is better for limiting immigration than Biden with the bill. This tells you how weak the bill was.
What does this even mean? The bill was never passed, so comparisons to "Biden with the bill" as if it was law are nonsensical.
It was always better to use the up coming elections to press the Dems for a good bill than a bill with Swiss cheese loopholes.
What "Swiss cheese" loopholes are you referring to? Trump was effectively no better on immigration than Obama, and most of his changes were executive orders that cost little political capital, and were trivial to repeal or ignore. Trump himself often went back on his more aggressive immigration changes whenever he got negative coverage on Fox News.
Ben___Garrison
11d ago
I find Nate's arguments pretty compelling here, assuming you actually want woke democrats on the Supreme Court, which I don't. But setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, he's basically correct.
Your arguments can basically be boiled down to the following:
- Seniority is important for judges to gain respect through judicial rigor.
- Democrats shouldn't bother thinking tactically since they should just win more elections by appealing to more people.
- Sotomayor would be more left-leaning than any candidate the dems could nominate now.
The first argument is the strongest, but it only has a marginal impact. The respect of judicial rigor that comes tenure is non-negligible. Further, other people in the thread added to the point that more senior justices get selected first to write opinions. But neither of these are that important. Even if they nominate Dumbo McGee, they're still locking down a lifetime appointment in one of the most consequential positions in America and the world. As a counterexample, Anthony Kennedy had pretty terrible reasoning in many of his opinions, but he was ultra-powerful by virtue of being a swing justice. So while you're making a good point, it'd be a lot stronger if you had some evidence of how much it actually matters in practice.
The second argument is just goofy. The senate has a heavy bias towards rural states, and it's been a minor miracle that Dems have remained competitive thus far, but as blue senators in red states retire or are defeated the bias will become undeniable. Nate has argued many times that Dems should stop pandering to the woke crazies, but he doesn't control the entire Democratic party. Abandoning positions will always come with a ton of pushback and there's no guarantee others will be on board, and the Dems would need to cut extremely deep to appeal to rural conservatives. The "tanking" argument doesn't hold a lot of water since there's a big difference between a 9-0 conservative majority vs a 5-4 conservative majority, just like how there'd be a huge difference between a 51-49 senate split vs a 100-0 split. Doing an end-run around the SCOTUS would be far, far harder than just fighting tactically for a justice now. Dems might end up uncompetitive in the senate in the long run, but they can still delay that for a bit.
The third argument is disproven by Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was recently confirmed in the same environment that a replacement for Sotomayor would face. Jackson is a female equivalent of Ibram Kendi, so no, I don't think the Dem pick would be guaranteed to be some moderate.
But what of Ukrainians themselves? Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw?
It's continually baffling to me how the majority of this forum thinks that defending your own lands from a hostile foreign invader somehow makes you a puppet. At least this thread isn't as bad as the one yesterday that explicitly called them an American puppet, and when pressed for evidence they produced several articles relating to Boris Johnson, apparently entirely unaware that he was the leader of the UK and not the US
Further, the idea that Ukraine is doomed and should just surrender now to prevent more bloodshed is only ever really advanced in bad faith. It's clear a lot of people on the right hate the woke left so much that they end up hating the entire West for having given birth to wokeness. Instead of specifically targeting the excesses of wokeness, they do the oikophobic thing and say the West itself must be destroyed. Since the invasion made the West seem more unified and righteous, they've been earnestly hoping for a Ukrainian defeat. They post as concern trolls similar to this, claiming they just want to stop the bloodshed of the Ukrainians, who after all are really just misguided mini-Russians.
The eventual resolution of this war is still very much in flux. It's looking more negative than it was post-Kherson, when there had been 3 big pushes liberating land. Now, Ukrainian leadership seems unable or unwilling to resolve the conscription issues, and House Republicans have sabotaged the compromise bill that would have provided aid (and limited immigration) at Trump's behest. That said, more aid could arrive through a different aid package or through Europeans boosting their own efforts. Ukraine could very well be forced to give up land in an eventual peace agreement, but how much and whether they have real security guarantees afterwards is still an open question. I'd go into it more, but this forum isn't particularly great for that so I'd just point anyone interested to the daily threads on /r/credibledefense.
Ben___Garrison
7d ago
rising anti-semitism on the right.
Anti-semitisim has historically come from the right, but is it "rising" still, especially compared to what's going on in the left?
Also, what exactly has Elon Musk done that's so anti-semitic?
Ben___Garrison
15d ago
Your posts always seem interesting. I wish they were comprehensible (to me), at least without really digging into them.
I'd really recommend a full paragraph of summary at the top, with no rhetorical flourishes or weird words (like "blahaj and leekspinners") that only make sense in the context of someone who's been following the situation. This screenshot that you linked does a fairly good job. You have that first sentence saying someone linked to the Linux community got banned, but you need more in a place like this where all the topics get jumbled together. I want to know if a topic interests me before I read any further, and you typically only have a single paragraph to hook people like me before my eyes glaze a bit and I scroll down.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
Capgains taxes are fine, and even desirable if you want to lower or stabilize the gini coefficient. Rich people tend to get most of their money through their existing wealth, not through directly working which would be subject to income taxes. It's the closest thing to a tax on wealth that most societies can really achieve. A society that lets wealth accumulate unhindered ends up looking like France in the Belle Epoque period, where dynasties of the ultra-wealthy control almost everything.
The capital gains tax is actually a very unfair and even absurd tax. You invest after-tax income from your salary and then when you realize a gain on those savings, even if it's just enough to keep up with inflation such that you have no real gain, you pay taxes again.
You can say something similar for a sales tax, where post-tax money is taxed again, and if inflation happens then the absolute value of the tax increases. None of this makes either tax "unfair" or "absurd".
Now, the government is doing the one thing that messes this up: they're redistributing much of those gains to the younger generations who include, in very large and increasing numbers, immigrants and their children
I do agree that trying to fix the problem by subsidizing housing for the young is silly. It's treating the symptoms instead of the cause, which is almost certainly NIMBYs and zoning restrictions like it is in the USA. But those are typically local issues that the national government doesn't have jurisdiction over, so they try to seem like they're "doing something" by just throwing money at the problem.
It's really a scheme to tax old people and give the benefits to younger people, which isn't the worst idea but the underlying issues of the housing crisis really do need to be resolved as well.
Ben___Garrison
7d ago
With Dems increasingly opposed to Israel, this makes me wonder if we'll see a broader realignment of American Jews towards the Republican party. Most are currently overwhelmingly leftist, although Orthodox Jews (a small minority) are conservative.
Ben___Garrison
7d ago
The problem with crypto is that it's used for a lot of fully illegal things, and so the government has cracked down on it quite a bit. It's also somewhat difficult for the average person to use, at least marginally more complicated than something like Paypal. Then there's the issue of risk, where plenty of people use crypto as a form of speculation so you can never be sure if the crypto held will have the same value as before unless you're using a stablecoin. Then there's the risk of exchanges just running off with your money like FTX did.
Most people beyond the small niche of ideological libertarians only use crypto when they're doing something sketchy or illegal, otherwise conventional banking is the easier option with far more guarantees for standard transactions.
Ben___Garrison
9d ago
I believe there are malicious, intelligent, competent agents which plan for humiliation and elimination of large masses of populations, because, respectively, social status is zero-sum and material resources are finite.
This is a silly position to hold. The world is positive-sum given that scientific advances in productivity combined with returns-to-scale have allowed us to make humanity richer than ever before. I presume you are right-wing but this horseshoes pretty well with the leftist idea that European civilizations only got rich by plundering brown countries, and that whites will forever be tainted by this until reparations enforces equity upon all nations (and perhaps not even then). It's utter tripe.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
Are you suggesting everyone just not use exchanges, or only use exchanges that let you still "hold your keys"? That's fine for committed crypto enthusiasts, but most people just want the financial system to work hassle-free. It's like the difference between an iPhone and some hacky Linux system.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
I mean, you also didn't respond to Dean either, who wrote more eloquently than I did about the faults of the position. I'll also note the bolding here wasn't present on the original post.
It's just bad logic that Europe has no agency, that they're all US puppets, and that the US is for some reason sending Boris instead of Blinken or Biden. Was Macron's recent remark about sending troops also a threat that the US was about to intervene with troops of its own?
When the US is funding 90% of the war
This isn't true today, and was never true before. If you look at total commitments, the combined EU outweighs the US by quite a lot. You probably would be frustrated with me for making a point like this and say you clearly implied it was for lethal aid, but even that wasn't true either. Poland + the Baltics sent pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down in the first few days, and other European powers like Germany have slowly ramped up their commitments to pick up the slack thereafter. The US remains the largest single source of military aid, but its handily beat by the combined EU today.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
It is not really taxing wealth, because an equally rich person who spends his money right away avoids it.
Someone who spends their money by buying stuff gets hit by sales taxes, while someone who "spends" their money to make more money gets hit with capgains taxes. The two are symmetrical in that way.
There's nothing inherently "unfair" with taxing investments, as opposed to taxing something like labor income. I read all 3 of your links since they were short, and basically the only argument he presents for not taxing investments is that saving is intrinsically good, but he gives no real reasoning for this. Yes, some saving is good, but he wants to replace capgains taxes with massive taxes on labor income. So doctors and engineers would be hit massively harshly (or "unfairly"), while trust-fund kids would get a windfall. He's trying to smuggle a plan for the rich with vague notions of "fairness" and "saving good" without examining externalities related to high inequality or dynastic wealth. High inequality is just as acidic for the civil polity as massive unassimilated immigration is, so we should generally avoid it where possible.
If you invest in government bonds, your real tax after-tax return will be negative.
Well that's just flatly not correct, as "government bonds" encompasses a range of investment vehicles including higher rate munis. Assuming you were talking about T-bills... it's still not really correct. Returns would depend on the prevailing rate set by the open market, the level of inflation, and timeframe. E.g. today the 30 year T bill is 4.77%, which is quite a bit higher than inflation.
I'm not generally opposed to adjusting capgains for inflation, as long as the total rate of capgains across the board doesn't change (it'd need to rise in other places to compensate). But the prevailing rates offered would likely decrease to the point where it was mostly a wash, and you were the same as before except with more complicated taxes where you'd need to calculate inflation rates.
Ben___Garrison
24d ago
This story is a great encapsulation of two important phenomena:
- How utterly asleep at the wheel most Europeans were in regards to Russia, especially post-Crimea.
- How much more dangerous Russia could be if they got a handle on corruption. But alas, no dictatorship can really solve corruption since it's too beneficial to the leader at the top for maintaining his position.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
is too stupid to be allowed to vote.
Calling people who support Ukraine aid "too stupid to vote" is just "boo outgroup", and if the valence was flipped it would probably be considered banworthy.
Ben___Garrison
26d ago
This post really gets my troll senses tingling. An account that's less than a week old posting about HBD, which is probably the most offensive topic a leftist would come across. Then starting said topic with "as a black person". Then not really saying much but vague agreement. I could easily see this post being the result of a leftist forum user from some other site saying "Hey guys, I'll go to that place where Nazis justify racism, and pretend to be a black man agreeing with them. Then they'll show us what they REALLY think!!!"
If this isn't the case then I'd suggest posting that essay type post sooner rather than later, as you'll get more interesting answers that way.
Ben___Garrison
15d ago
The future of Ukraine is Somali and Bangladeshi migrants working on farms owned by American financial institutions and managed by HR women educated in the US
Nonsense. Wokeness and high immigration is not enforced top-down by the US, it's a decision that each nation makes independently. Japan has been under more intense US occupation than any other country, yet it's far less woke than most of Europe.
Ben___Garrison
15d ago
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
sending most of their men off to die in trenches
This is not congruent with reality. Russia itself claims UA has lost 444k soldiers killed and wounded up to 2/27/24. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split of males:females, this means they have lost (KIA or WIA) around 2% of their prewar male population. And of course that number is coming from Russia, so that's massively inflated for obvious reasons, as well as for reasons unique to Russian reporting statistics. That's obviously a huge tragedy in human terms, and there's also the ~5M mostly women and children that have fled as refugees, but it's nowhere near "most of their men dying in trenches".
On the other hand, Russia's aims have always been transparently genocidal. The "misguided mini Russians" need to be put in their place according to the Russian government, and that's how stuff like Bucha happens, or that video of Russians decapitating a screaming Ukrainian POW, or the various castrations of POWs. Real ethnic solidarity there.
Ben___Garrison
11d ago
I think it's wrong to attribute the popularization of "incel" primarily to women. Women definitely prefer to be with men who are successful with women, but the vast majority are not consciously aware of their hypergamy. Women don't look for men who brag about their bodycount. They have other insults for low-status men, like the ever-useful "creepy" term that will never go out of style. While some women might have used the term "incel" on Tumblr or in random blogposts, it was more used as a replacement for the "entitlement" phenomenon, i.e. that men are not "entitled" to have sex with women because they're friends or neighbors or "boys will be boys" or whatever.
In contrast, some men absolutely consider bodycount to be crucial to any man's overall value. Thus, terms like "incel" really started gaining popularity on male-dominated forums like 4chan long before they broke into the mainstream.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
You make good points. I usually balk whenever I see crypto as the only option for payment, but if these businesses actually invested in a bit of digital infrastructure to make stablecoin payments hassle-free then it'd probably be fine. And considering the other option is "go out of business", it seems kind of strange that they haven't done this yet.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
You seem like a Perun-watcher. I watch him too. He's great.
I should have specified a bit more clearly: Russia will be able to reconstitute the majority of its combat capacity in 5-10 years. There will be some lingering areas that take longer of course, but people are acting like Russia is going to be incapable of launching another invasion for 20+ years. The US army was severely battered after Vietnam, yet it reconstituted itself very effectively in 18 years to curbstomp Saddam in '91. It probably could have done so a lot earlier too.
An officer corps of 20-years experience takes 20 years to build
This seems like it would be referencing NCOs, but Russia never had a robust and empowered NCO contingent. It's always been a very top-heavy organization relative to other militaries. This conflict practically erased the reforms trying to implement the Battalion Tactical Group as a coherent fighting unit, but in many ways this conflict has been a return to the basics for Russia. It's a big stupid artillery-centric army that tries to solve problems by blasting them with a truckload of artillery and frontal assaults using infiltration tactics in good scenarios and cannonfodder kamikazes in bad ones. In other words, there's not really a lot to relearn here.
The Russian production rates of aircraft
The naval losses
Both the Russian aerospace forces and its navy would be irrelevant in any larger conflict with the West. It might be relevant if Trump causes NATO to collapse and Russia manages it's diplomacy to 1v1 a country like Finland, but otherwise it was never much of threat.
The bigger issue for the Russian military-industrial complex is the Russian arms export industry.
Yes, this is definitely happening. As of now this market share is mostly going to countries like France and South Korea, but in the long run it will likely go to China which will probably be a lot worse simply since they're more of a long term threat.
Ben___Garrison
15d ago
America be flooded by Africans
My dude, what the heck are you talking about? The top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (24 percent of immigrants), India (6 percent), China (5 percent), the Philippines (4.5 percent), and El Salvador (3 percent). So El Salvador sent more immigrants to the US than any nation in Africa. Concern about the US being flooded by Hispanics would at least be grounded in reality, although most indicators show them following a similar path that the Irish went through.
Ben___Garrison
15d ago
Russia itself was mocked as being a third world country with a gas station. That hasn't exactly aged well.
It was mocked as a gas station with nukes. Nobody ever said Russia couldn't be dangerous if it wanted to.
Ben___Garrison
13d ago
I personally like having things like roads and the military for protection.
Your anger reminds me of the Liberation Pledge that vegans did, where they aggressively pushed their principles to their non-vegan friends in the form of ultimatums, "either stop eating meat or we can't be friends". When their non-vegan friends didn't comply with their craziness, the vegans got extremely mad and essentially said "well I guess they weren't ever my friends anyways!!!"
Losing friends and making enemies for pointless battles is just dumb. Politics has always been overwhelmingly about vibes and direct personal interest. Leftists of the e.g. feminist+pro-Muslim variety irk me as much as anyone, but it's utter silliness to think you'd accomplish anything but your own harm by raging at those types of people. And if you think your outgroup is the only side with a large amount of contradictions, then you're hopelessly naive. The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries. Individual rulers or religious leaders just cherry-picked whichever parts happened to suit them. For another example, it wasn't too long ago that a large chunk of the alt-right cheered when Trump sank the most conservative immigration bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. When pressed, most of the alt-right just mumbled out explanations that showed they had no idea what was actually in the bill, or the state of current immigration laws. In practice it didn't actually matter, since the fact that they like Trump's vibes easily overrode their ideological pre-commitments.
How would you feel if I did what you plan on doing to Christians or Trump supporters? How would you feel if I "say something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more"? You'd probably think I'm being silly and dumb, right?
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