Trump wants to end Arts and Public Broadcasting

[scrangos]

Why do they call social security an entitlement program? Dont you pay for it yourself as you work then get it back? Its not like you're being given a handout, its your own money.

[Deleted]

Well, you are free to think so. I assure you that I am. Is it so hard for you to believe that there exist people such as myself? People who take nothing at face value?

I tried formulating my response to this in many different ways but I didn't come up with any that wouldn't risk me infractions, no matter how polite I'd put it.

[Torto]

Why?

?yhW

Oh your'e a barrel of laughs.

Because taxpayer funds should never be used where there is adequate private organisations that provide the same thing.

[Berengil]

I tried formulating my response to this in many different ways but I didn't come up with any that wouldn't risk me infractions, no matter how polite I'd put it.

Well, ok I guess. I've enjoyed our debate. And if you change your mind ....

NOTE TO MODS: I take no offense at anything Creamy Flames says to me. Please don't infract him or her.

[Crissi]

Those things are unnecessary in a practical sense. Therefore, no public funding.

Sewers/armies/healthcare/food stamps/etc OTOH have practical use. Therefore, public funding.

Id say providing jobs is a practicality, even if you disagree with the job.

[Deleted]

Better than what we do now... Rather spend 1 year every 20 years fighting a country than 10 years in a row wasting our resources rebuilding it.... They attacked us we fucked them up in response that was their fault they fucked with us not ours. Wasn't our fault they harbored terrorists.

No actual Afghans attacked you on 9/11.
No Iraqis either.


http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us...rs-fast-facts/
Hijackers by Airplane:
American Airlines Flight 11
Mohamed Atta - Egypt, tactical leader of 9/11 plot and pilot
Abdul Aziz al Omari - Saudi Arabia
Wail al Shehri - Saudi Arabia
Waleed al Shehri - Saudi Arabia
Satam al Suqami - Saudi Arabia
United Airlines Flight 175
Fayez Banihammad - United Arab Emirates
Ahmed al Ghamdi - Saudi Arabia
Hamza al Ghamdi - Saudi Arabia
Marwan al Shehhi - United Arab Emirates, pilot
Mohand al Shehri - Saudi Arabia
American Airlines Flight 77
Hani Hanjour - Saudi Arabia, pilot
Nawaf al Hazmi - Saudi Arabia
Salem al Hazmi - Saudi Arabia
Khalid al Mihdhar - Saudi Arabia
Majed Moqed - Saudi Arabia
United Airlines Flight 93
Saeed al Ghamdi - Saudi Arabia
Ahmad al Haznawi - Saudi Arabia
Ziad Jarrah - Lebanon, pilot
Ahmed al Nami - Saudi Arabia

You fucked up two countries who had little to nothing to do with it, ensuring that both of these countries would continue hating you or hate you even more. Iraqi even became so fractured and destabilized that it allowed the formation of ISIS.
So hey, maybe chill with the warmaking cus so far you've been really bad at fucking up the right people.

[Crissi]

Are there adequate private organizations that provide the same thing? If so, list them.

Most come prom wealthy individuals or families. SO if a town has a few of those, yeah arts will thrive. Towns without them? Not so much or it takes a while. Austin itself, while a music mecca now, had no formal super wealthy patrons until Dell came along in the 90's, so their museums and zoos are pretty lackluster except for the Texas State museum

Guess why Texas state museum is awesome? Because its helped by the Texas government!

Ft. Worth has a bunch of excellent cultural venues because Ft. Worth has an absurd number of wealthy families that like to give to the arts. Kimbell, Basses, Moncriefs...

[Barnabas]

Why do they call social security an entitlement program? Dont you pay for it yourself as you work then get it back? Its not like you're being given a handout, its your own money.

en·ti·tle·ment pro·gram
noun
a government program that guarantees certain benefits to a particular group or segment of the population.

[Wiyld]

Well, you are free to think so. I assure you that I am. Is it so hard for you to believe that there exist people such as myself? People who take nothing at face value?

I bet you get ALL the girls

[Exedore]

We could start with not handing out gigantic tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

1. Laffer Curve. There is a maximum amount of money you can get via taxation.
2. Even if you taxed the "rich" at 100%, the government would still be running a deficit.

Periods of economic prosperity in the U.S. are typically ushered in by either disruptive technology or significant tax cuts.

Cutting funding for public shit like PBS is a TINY FUCKING FRACTION of the budget. It literally is nothing in comparison to the military budget. Why don't we cut from there?

Death by a thousand cuts. It's easy to look at the big things (military and entitlements), but cutting the small things helps too.

You also have to look at the philosophical level: what should government be doing? The group which currently controls government tends to prefer it be less involved in some areas. There's nothing saying the government has to contribute to art, and it could be argued that it isn't allowed to either based on the federal government's enumerated powers.

In addition, what role should the military have? It's currently structured and funded to be able to support wars in two theaters simultaneously - a capability which we've been using. If the U.S. were to scale back its military significantly, other countries may grow theirs and flex their muscle. That could mean Russia annexing more countries without fear of retaliation, or Iranian or North Korean provocation; the Chinese and Russians surely wouldn't care too much what those countries do.

Nation states are designed to run perpetual deficits. Those deficits are peoples savings. $12.9 trillion of the national debt is held in one way or another by American citizens. With no national debt you have no social security, and vastly reduced pensions. The debt has to increase over time as society becomes wealthier to allow that expansion of wealth, and that means running a perpetual deficit.

The "money we owe ourselves" argument is pretty funny. Eventually that money comes due and the people want to get paid. What do you do then? Issue more debt, right? That just digs the whole deeper. The end result is defaulting on the debt. If the U.S. defaulted on its debt, it would be a world-wide economic crisis. And guess what? Defaulting means the money we owe ourselves will never be paid.

At the current rate, interest on the national debt is set to displace all discretionary spending (which includes the military). That is not healthy nor sustainable. Your argument for perpetual deficits is about small perpetual deficits, not large ones like we currently have.

[Torto]

Most come prom wealthy individuals or families. SO if a town has a few of those, yeah arts will thrive. Towns without them? Not so much or it takes a while. Austin itself, while a music mecca now, had no formal super wealthy patrons until Dell came along in the 90's, so their museums and zoos are pretty lackluster except for the Texas State museum

Guess why Texas state museum is awesome? Because its helped by the Texas government!

Ft. Worth has a bunch of excellent cultural venues because Ft. Worth has an absurd number of wealthy families that like to give to the arts. Kimbell, Basses, Moncriefs...

But if people were actually interested in them, they would pay to see them. Whether its a museum, an opera or a symphony orchestra, if there is demand for it they will fund themselves. Whys should we forgo a hospital wing just so some jerk high on crack can get taxpayer funds to create https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ ?

[alexw]

Better than what we do now... Rather spend 1 year every 20 years fighting a country than 10 years in a row wasting our resources rebuilding it.... They attacked us we fucked them up in response that was their fault they fucked with us not ours. Wasn't our fault they harbored terrorists.

Lol what? Since when did Iraq attack us and since when did it harbor terrorists? Come on over back to reality here......

[Berengil]

I bet you get ALL the girls

Whenever I feel like scratching the "itch" , there's plenty of low-hanging fruit to be picked around here. All for nothing more than dinner and a few drinks. No Cosby stuff though. I'm no crook.

Not entirely sure what your post has to do with the topic though.

[Orlong]

Well that's certainly an opinion....

As a fan of art and good British comedy I find it hard to take you seriously.

Let me know when the British start making something thats actually funny like Married with Children, Alf, or Mama's Family

[Delana]

You know what is more of a waste in money....wanting to build a useless fucken wall.

Not a waste of money when Mexico pays for it.

[Deleted]

1. Laffer Curve. There is a maximum amount of money you can get via taxation.
2. Even if you taxed the "rich" at 100%, the government would still be running a deficit.

Periods of economic prosperity in the U.S. are typically ushered in by either disruptive technology or significant tax cuts.


Death by a thousand cuts. It's easy to look at the big things (military and entitlements), but cutting the small things helps too.

You also have to look at the philosophical level: what should government be doing? The group which currently controls government tends to prefer it be less involved in some areas. There's nothing saying the government has to contribute to art, and it could be argued that it isn't allowed to either based on the federal government's enumerated powers.

In addition, what role should the military have? It's currently structured and funded to be able to support wars in two theaters simultaneously - a capability which we've been using. If the U.S. were to scale back its military significantly, other countries may grow theirs and flex their muscle. That could mean Russia annexing more countries without fear of retaliation, or Iranian or North Korean provocation; the Chinese and Russians surely wouldn't care too much what those countries do.

The "money we owe ourselves" argument is pretty funny. Eventually that money comes due and the people want to get paid. What do you do then? Issue more debt, right? That just digs the whole deeper. The end result is defaulting on the debt. If the U.S. defaulted on its debt, it would be a world-wide economic crisis. And guess what? Defaulting means the money we owe ourselves will never be paid.

At the current rate, interest on the national debt is set to displace all discretionary spending (which includes the military). That is not healthy nor sustainable. Your argument for perpetual deficits is about small perpetual deficits, not large ones like we currently have.

You can't argue "death by a thousand cuts" and then be against further taxation. If every little bit counts, then SURELY, that applies to what you GAIN not just what you spend?
You'd also need to be against further tax cuts, if "death by a thousand cuts" is what you're going with. Every little bit does matter, I agree. So lets be consistent with it and apply it logically.

Cutting the big things still helps more though...

I'm quite sure there are things you could get rid of in the military with the "thousand cuts" rethoric in mind.

[Crissi]

But if people were actually interested in them, they would pay to see them. Whether its a museum, an opera or a symphony orchestra, if there is demand for it they will fund themselves. Whys should we forgo a hospital wing just so some jerk high on crack can get taxpayer funds to create https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ ?

museums take a shit ton of capital, as well as donors, to set up since art and artifacts are often a part of private or govt collections already. That's why you either need the gov or wealthy families involved. So if you dont have any families, the gov't is the only thing left.

Most museums cost money anyways to help with the upkeep even after all of that. The federal National Mall museums seem to be an exception (probably because its our tax dollars paying for them already).

and art is subjective. I think Rothko is a crakpot and his shit is a bun ch of dumb squares, but thats just my opinion.

[alexw]

1. Laffer Curve. There is a maximum amount of money you can get via taxation.
2. Even if you taxed the "rich" at 100%, the government would still be running a deficit.

Periods of economic prosperity in the U.S. are typically ushered in by either disruptive technology or significant tax cuts.


Death by a thousand cuts. It's easy to look at the big things (military and entitlements), but cutting the small things helps too.

You also have to look at the philosophical level: what should government be doing? The group which currently controls government tends to prefer it be less involved in some areas. There's nothing saying the government has to contribute to art, and it could be argued that it isn't allowed to either based on the federal government's enumerated powers.

In addition, what role should the military have? It's currently structured and funded to be able to support wars in two theaters simultaneously - a capability which we've been using. If the U.S. were to scale back its military significantly, other countries may grow theirs and flex their muscle. That could mean Russia annexing more countries without fear of retaliation, or Iranian or North Korean provocation; the Chinese and Russians surely wouldn't care too much what those countries do.

The "money we owe ourselves" argument is pretty funny. Eventually that money comes due and the people want to get paid. What do you do then? Issue more debt, right? That just digs the whole deeper. The end result is defaulting on the debt. If the U.S. defaulted on its debt, it would be a world-wide economic crisis. And guess what? Defaulting means the money we owe ourselves will never be paid.

At the current rate, interest on the national debt is set to displace all discretionary spending (which includes the military). That is not healthy nor sustainable. Your argument for perpetual deficits is about small perpetual deficits, not large ones like we currently have.

False, flat out wrong. The debt is not defaulted on. Yes more debt is issued. But that's a requirement of economic growth. You cannot have economic expansion without expansion of the money supply and that's what happens when debt is issued.

You can have all sorts of economic crises but a sovereign currency issuer defaulting on its sovereign debt isn't one of them. And invariably when countries not in control of their money supply default on their debts (e.g. Greece which doesn't control the Euro) the reason for the default isn't due to issuance of debt but because of chronic economic mismanagement (again Greece).

As for the rest of your post its complete bull****. The period of greatest economic growth the world has ever seen was during the post war economic order spanning from 1945 to 1980. Economic growth rates in multiple nations regularly hit 4-5% a year. And guess what the tax rates on the wealthy were then? 70%+. Which kept inequality low and thus growth high.

Even the IMF that great neoliberal organization understands the issue now. That for high levels of economic growth you need low inequality and that requires high tax rates on the wealthy.

[Thage]

Not a waste of money when Mexico pays for it.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll get right on it now that word's gotten out Trump plans to basically write the taxpayers a giant IOU to fund it.

[Scottyjscizzle]

PBS doesnt play anything other dumb boring movies on masterpiece theater, Lawrence Welk (Which nobody under 80 watches), telethons begging for money, and stupid BBC shows like Fawlty Towers. Id rather the funding go to CSPAN to broadcast senate and house hearings.

The National Endowment for the Arts is also a waste of money. Why should taxpayers pay to operate a building and pay for a bunch of stupid paintings and sculptures just for snooty people to look at

When was the last time you even browsed past a pbs channel of any sort? They have a ton of awesome documentaries. Something sorely lacking with the loss of channels like tlc, and the history channel to bullshit like "ancient aliens." Then again That seems right up someone who would support trumps alley.