Big Tech Opponent Bernie Sanders Raises More Money From Big Tech Employees Than Anyone Else (vox.com) 265
Despite his criticisms of companies like Amazon, Bernie Sanders is raising more money from Big Tech than any other 2020 presidential candidate. From a report: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter employees funnelled almost $270,000 into the Sanders campaign during the last three months of 2019, according to new fundraising disclosures filed this weekend. Almost half of that money came from employees of Google, according to an analysis for Recode by GovPredict. Looking at contributions from workers at five large companies doesn't tell the complete story of Silicon Valley's financial support. But it offers one concrete way to stack-rank how the "tech industry" -- so nebulously defined -- is splitting when it comes to political support.
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Well he said "tend to run smart," so there's got to be someone who doesn't fit the trend. Thanks for volunteering.
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Hey, a good graphics designer is a treasure. People who "program websites" are glorified graphics arrangers.
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Hey, who cares what the "title" of the job is....
Where do I go to make over 6 figures making websites?!?!?
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Quit your job, start collecting clients. If you're any good and you really like WordPress you should be able to hit six figures no problem. People pay stupid amounts for design and maintenance of websites.
If you really want to make money though, people pay extraordinarily stupid amounts for simple databases.
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so they believe in science, not dogma, as far as things like global warming, criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
And some of us think the climate numbers are being messed with to push an agenda, the educational system is rigged to produce a never-ending stream of Junior Marxists, and that the criminal system is being weakened to the point of not existing anymore. We also think immigration and felon-voting is being used to pad the rolls of the Left.
If you're working 50+ hrs and no vacay, get a better job. I did. Cut commute in half, work 40 hours (plus on-call once every 5 weeks) and no one calls me outside of on-ca
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And some of us think the climate numbers are being messed with to push an agenda, the educational system is rigged to produce a never-ending stream of Junior Marxists, and that the criminal system is being weakened to the point of not existing anymore. We also think immigration and felon-voting is being used to pad the rolls of the Left.
Do you also believe the earth is flat, and the moon landing is faked? Stop believing stupid shit.
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Do you also believe the earth is flat, and the moon landing is faked? Stop believing stupid shit.
Why, because *you* tell me to? You're the arbriter?
Stop eating what they spoon-feed you.
Moon landing was real. The reason we went there wasn't all that altruistic, though. I bet you thought JFK was all about space exploration, right? The real reason was to advance the heavy lifters for ICBMs. Lob a capsule into space, lob a warhead across the world. Same diff.
JFK was a lying shit, just like all of them. If that's the party you remember, it died at the hands of Clinton.
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Moon landing was real. The reason we went there wasn't all that altruistic, though. I bet you thought JFK was all about space exploration, right? The real reason was to advance the heavy lifters for ICBMs. Lob a capsule into space, lob a warhead across the world. Same diff.
I imagine this decision had a pro/con list a mile long, and I'm positive you are partially correct but entirely cynical. The pro list probably looked like business, education, rivalry and war, in alphabetical order. Each of those had a number of significant sub-bullets which contained a mixture of pragmatism and optimism.
If we just wanted to lob ICBMs however, we did not need to go to the moon to do it. That's a rather significant detour. Further, landing a ship on the moon, with humans in it, letting them wander around a bit, and then returning them safely home is not at all relevant to lighting off a nuclear warhead somewhere in the Soviet Union. It's an extremely expensive burden to add to the project, to the point that it might have kept it from getting off the ground, pardon the pun. There were no doubt a long list of reasons they did this too, beyond simple exploration.
JFK was a lying shit, just like all of them. If that's the party you remember, it died at the hands of Clinton.
I don't care about parties, they're all paid for by people who don't share my interests and driven to goals that aren't necessarily mine. But yes, JFK was a politician and said what needed to be said to sell the agenda he felt needed selling. In hindsight however, voting for him right now would be the simplest choice ever.
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Its amazing what this appears to do to basically open our borders to anyone that wants to just walk come on over unregulated and makes it nigh impossible to get rid of them, even if they commit crimes.
Where the hell did common sense and traditional US values go?
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OK, I read most of that bill, and it doesn't do what you're claiming it does. What it does do is ban for-profit detention centers and put the burden on the government to determine within 48 hours why someone should be detained. But it seems they still would remain in custody another 3 days awaiting a hearing, and then the court could detain them, set bail, or let them out on their own recognizance or with other conditions. So in the unlikely event this becomes law, I suggest you invest in ankle bracelet manufacturing and monitoring companies.
In the meantime, before, during, or after the detention, the alien could be deported in accordance with the laws.
Climate (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't all the climate data published? Can't you do the verifications yourself?
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they want unions! (Score:2)
they want unions!
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Also, tech employees tend to run smart, so they believe in science, not dogma, as far as things like global warming, criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
Is this the same crowd that had a collective meltdown over Damour's factually accurate memo?
I'm just going to start laughing now.
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If they were so smart, why didn't they choose another industry? You don't have to work for a tech company to do tech work. I personally work for the health care sector. They pay well no matter where you live; no need to stay in places where sidewalks are littered with shit and hypodermic needles, and rent high enough to eat up all of that high salary.
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I believe the translation is "slow news day" and superficial analysis. Bernie raised $34.5m in the time frame so we're talking about less than 1% of total. If anything is remotely interesting from the stats, it's that Yang who raised $16.5m in the period had $237k from tech employees, so about 1.5% and seemingly over represented compared to the others proportionally. But we're still talking very small numbers so I don't know if they actually mean anything. (source campaign funds raised q4 https://www.theepo [theepochtimes.com]
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The leaders of big tech companies are also smart and they realize that their companies, and everyone else, would be better off if certain things were changed. Business sucks because a) everyone thinks they know what the game is and how it's best played and b) everyone is scared not to play by those rules because if they guess wrong they'll be pariahs. So the enlightened want regulations to make everyone play by saner rules, all at the same time.
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I believe there's something else going on here.
Modern, investor-darling tech ventures embrace the value of creative destruction and radical transformation. They Holy Grail is "disruption" -- breaking the rice bowl of an existing, complacent industry, like hotel rooms or taxi rides. These enterprises also engage in transformation for its own sake, creating products that people neither want nor use, but can be persuaded to use and become dependent upon.
Even if this sounds repugnant to your personal values,
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Seems like he's talking about work conditions and you're talking about compensation, related but two different topics.
This!
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Exactly this, most consultants are in demand and their biggest problem is prioritising making money over personal time as everyone wants more of their time than they have available.
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When they get big pay checks from their tech jobs, they spend it on a place to live and the latest tech trends, going to trendy restaurants, ubering to the coolest new bar, and competing for the available women in their dating pool.
Clearly I've gone into the wrong tech industry. Which tech industry is the one that provides the women? At the moment mine only provides stale bagels once a month.
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Which tech industry is the one that provides the women? At the moment mine only provides stale bagels once a month.
Traditionally, industries that do provide women as an employee perk, such as mining, have not been the greatest employers to work for.
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None provide women. Silicon Valley is notoriously gender imbalanced
Silicon Valley is only gender imbalanced because of the majors being chosen in college. 60% of college graduates are women but only a small percentage of them are getting degrees in programming or engineering. Silicon Valley actually hires a higher percentage of women than the percentage of women graduating with the right degrees.
A non story [Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Some are, some aren't.
You're talking about a heterogeneous group of different employees working for a heterogeneous group of different companies, and talking as if they were all identical and have identical employment conditions and identical opinions.
The summary also doesn't compare Sanders to any other candidates, but the linked article does. It shows that Sanders is the single largest recipient of donations, but still, only about a quarter of the "big-tech employee" donations go to him. (Yang is number two).
Really it's a non story. With the hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigning, a quarter of a million dollars in donations is pretty trivial.
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I guarantee that there are coders in Silicon Valley working for $15 an hour. Not everyone in tech gets stock options. The idea that everyone in Silly Valley is rich just proves one of two things. Either you have never been there, or, in the circles you travel in, all your friends are rich.
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You might want to ask an Amazon warehouse worker about that. Or one of the poor sods Facebook uses to moderate content.
big tech worker here-in touch with reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Tech workers are constantly humiliated by objective truth. You think you're smart? Well, your last bug suggests otherwise. You think your idea will improve response times? We can very precisely quantify the effectiveness of your idea vs that of a peer. Reality will smack you in the face and ground you rather quickly. I've had some amazing wins with my projects...and then been put on a failing one and got nervous for my job...it makes you focus on doing actual good work and isn't kind to those with high opinions of themselves. The most successful and valuable of us know we're only a few missteps from a fall.
Myth #2 We like our working conditions. Most of us actually don't like them. They're not as bad as big-law or most doctors, but we know that we face a huge risk of age discrimination or discrimination based on having kids. Yeah, you're desirable when you're 30 and kidless with flexibility to travel and work late. For many of these surplus of jobs, you're not going to find many people in a technical role over 40....even though the technology worked with is 20+ years old. When I leave my current job, I am going to shave off all grey hair to improve my odds of landing a job. Once you land the job, the hours can vary....some bosses have no problems asking for 60h weeks to meet an arbitrary deadline. Don't like it? We'll find a 401b VISA applicant who will get deported if he displeases us to stay late when you refuse. The 60h week doesn't even help. It only makes things worse...good manager know that...but it's nice theater to show you're hustling.
More about the money: Most of us earning 200k or more live in the most expensive cities. 200k in the Boston area means you cannot afford a home within 30 minutes of your office. The same applies for Silicon Valley. Sure, get 2 tech workers to marry and with 400k household income you can get a nice suburban house 30+ minutes away. Want a place in 10 mile radius, you're looking at a condo
Tech workers vote liberal because we know we're anomalies. We know our company can go out of business any day. We know our jobs will be automated in our lifetime. I'd rather have guaranteed healthcare for me and everyone in my community than see my company's stock price rise 20% (and I have a lot of shares). I want to ensure if I lose my eyesight or develop carpal tunnel or need to care for a disabled loved one, I won't have to live in poverty. I want to ensure I am not being poisoned by the air and facing the wrath of climate change....just so the oil companies can keep their subsidies.
Finally, unlike most Republicans and conservatives, we're smart enough to know our success is based on people buying our wares. If you work at Apple and no one can afford to buy an iPhone but other tech workers, you're screwed. The success of the general public means more sales for us and thus our our business expands. I don't mind paying higher taxes if it means less poverty, less crime, less anxiety and suffering around me and most importantly...more sales, thus ensuring my job and company thrive. For my company, our success is not based on us being awesome...it's based on people buying services from my company...nothing more...if they have money, we prosper...if they don't, we suffer. I have no clue why that isn't more obvious to half the country.
We work in costly areas because the jobs are there (Score:4, Interesting)
So move. IF you're making 400K and barely getting by, move somewhere where making 80K is rolling in money and enjoy life.I may be moving shortly My parents moved. My grandparents moved. My great grandparents immigrated to the US. Movement won't kill you.
Tech companies only set up shop in tech cities. There are not many jobs in the rural areas for skilled software engineers. I'd love to take my salary and live where I grew up. I could buy a mansion with 1.5 years salary. However, there are no jobs there. It's not an option.
Regarding taxes, you can intelligently debate what role the gov should play and how big it should be. However, I think we can all agree that gov should only spend the money it has. Deficit spending is not sustainable and is just hiding the underlying problems.
Also, most gov spending is not useless in my mind. Even if you're spending 500k on homeless apartments....that money is not going to the homeless, but local contractors building things. I don't think it is money WELL spent, but I'd rather see money wasted in the form of paychecks to folks than money sitting in Jeff Bezos' bank account due to the next GOP tax break. If a gov handout gives a construction firm work, maybe those workers can afford to buy products from our customers. I'd rather see our sales double and my taxes go up 20% than see my taxes go down 5% and our sales drop by 20%.
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I lived in Chicago and Los Angeles before Boston...great cities, but SHITTY job markets in comparison. You had to fight for jobs that treated employees poorly, underfunded their departments, and laid you off on whim. Even if you find a good employer, your competition is more fierce because of the shortage of jobs even in the #2 and #3 cities in the US. In Boston, everyone who is anyone is here and hiring...my biggest problem is expanding my team and dealing with the flood of recruiter e-mails.
There are many options and different strokes for different folks. However, the ones of us swimming in stock options per the original post are probably not in secondary markets, but more likely SV/SF, NYC, Seattle, Boston, Austin, etc.
If you want "A" job, you have a lot more options. If you want to be treated well by a good employer, you're probably stuck in a few major cities. The real estate market near my big tech job SUCKS, but I am paid well and earning 1/3 of my salary in stock grants....much much better than any bank or insurance company or healthcare company or other non-tech company ever treated me.
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Yeah, no. The big tech employees are rolling in money with their stock options. You must be kidding.
SOME are rolling in money.
Some aren't.
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Bernie Sanders is a multimillionaire and has plenty of other multi millionaires giving him money in exchange for God-knows-what.
Factories that want to manufacture all that government cheese we're gonna need under a Sanders administration?
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Yeah, no. The big tech employees are rolling in money with their stock options. You must be kidding.
The irony being they're also the most supportive of the pro-socialist candidate. Everyone expects the poor to support socialism, they have nothing to lose really. But we're talking about the top 10% (minus the top 1%).
Something in your mindset is not matching reality.
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Exactly. Those Amazon order pickers are rolling in so much money that Amazon needed to develop robots to fill in when they just decide to take off a day or two off and swing by their vacation homes in Bermuda.
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We are talking about tech workers, not warehouse workers. Get a grip.
The article does not make that distinction.
You can guess that it's the tech workers, not the low-level working-class drones, but that is not in the information given.
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I see, so you have degrees in all the major sciences and can debate with others on the particulars in those sciences. Could you get finished with the active reviewing of studies, data, methodologies, and conclusions so we can be sure you aren't putting your faith in something you know squat about?
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If you believe you have the mental capacity to research all material on every single topic and still come to conclusions even remotely useful, you are either magnitudes more intelligent than any person ever, or arrogant. Either answer amounts to the latter.
When it comes to rocket science, I'll gladly trust the opinion of a rocket scientist over my own.
The best any non-expert can do is to weigh the relevant credentials of the researchers involved.
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How do you know it goes against my 'beliefs'? What are my 'beliefs'?
Hint: When you presume another's position in an argument, you're hallucinating. It's a pretty sure sign that you're wrong, or at least you don't really know what the conversation is about.
I don't have 'beliefs', I am uniquely faithless. That goes for the more traditional religions, but also about science. Here's a thought exercise for you; how do you know we went to the moon? What unforgeable data do you have that proves, beyond a shad
Re: I want Medicare for All (Score:2, Interesting)
My buddy literally just got laid off 15 months ago (Score:2)
Sanders is offering to end all that. He's offering an end to Wallet Biopsies (google it). An end to the constant risk of medical bankruptcy. And he's offering to massively increase my bargaining power by taking healthcare off the table for companies. He's offering to make
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Your buddy was literally under the exact same plan, except that his employer was probably footing a portion of premiums, since under COBRA you can only be required to pay the plan cost +2% [dol.gov].
So is every other Democratic candidate who has partic
Leaving out a few points aren't ja? (Score:5, Informative)
2. I don't know what you're talking about. Wind & Solar are already at or above parity in cost. And the Green New Deal's "New Deal" means ten million new middle class jobs. That also means more competition for workers, driving wages up more. And it still benefits small business because although they'll pay more wages they'll have more customers.
3. This would only be a problem if we banned fraking w/o seeking alternatives, which Sanders does.
4. And in exchange we get clean air, fight climate change and Universal Healthcare. All of which save us vast sums of money in the next 10 years.
5. Everyone is already going to college, the race to the bottom is because you're jobs are being shipped overseas and the 1% isn't making new ones for you. The 1% failed you. Now's the time to step up and solve the problem yourslf.
6. Gov't shutdowns don't affect entitlement programs, which M4A would be.
7. Yep. And if you plan on retiring some day you want this. Americans aren't having kids. Our birthrate is below sustainability. And the GOP isn't letting immigrants in. Go look at Japan if you want to see what happens to countries with negative birthrates and little to no immigration. They've been in recession for 30 years.
8. Bernie's been fighting the good fight for 50 years. Nobody can forget after that much time.
You've got a lot of talking points from well funded right wing think tanks. They've tricked you into supporting them to your detriment. I know the talking points feel good, they were carefully focus group tested for just that purpose. But don't you get tired of being tricked? You're clearly a smart guy, you've got to know the think tanks are preying on your emotions.
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Mod up please. This is very well put.
I'd also ad that most of his plans have been tested and proven in every other first world country on the planet and are completely compatible with capitalism.
Re: I want Medicare for All (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the wealthy are so opposed to universal healthcare. Healthcare functions as a tether to make employees afraid to lose their job. There are many who have enough savings to quit and take a risk trying to start their own small business, work freelance, or just spend their time looking for a different job and be really picky. But to go without health insurance? That means you could be financially ruined at any moment. Employer provided health insurance is a means of control.
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The wealthy don't resist universal healthcare because they want to enslave their employees. They don't want universal healthcare because the method of obtaining quality care goes from "Who has the most $" to "Who has the most connections?"
They know they have money, they're unsure of connections.
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Who has the most connections? You've never been to another first world nation have you?
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Register at your local community health clinic, because that's basically the level of care you'll be receiving. I swear, people who want government-provided shit should try being poor for awhile if they imagine it to be so great.
People who are too poor to afford health insurance don't think government-provided healthcare will be "great".
What they think is, it would be better than dying.
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What they think is, it would be better than dying.
And it totally would be.
However, that's a tough sell for the portion of the American population that doesn't want the healthcare equivalent of driving around in a Trabant. We absolutely do need some kind of compromise which solves the whole "poor people dying" thing, without tearing down the whole system in the process.
The only reason they don't think that (Score:2)
At a certain point reality just beats you over the head too much to ignore.
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And not to mention that your country already spends more money per capita on healthcare than any other country in earth. With those shitty results.
Good luck, i hope sanders makes it, but with the full force of both parties against him now and the probable lack of support from the Democratic party if he becomes the nominee, that will be hard. Still doable though.
As mentioned it's been a while for me (Score:2)
Also not everybody's doing "real" tech jobs. Some are stuck and entry or mid range help desk. 20+ years of offshoring makes life hard for techies. Most techies don't like to mention when they're stuck in shit jobs because it's seen as a personal
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To be fair mine didn't start until the first of the next month, for me that was 6 days. I'm fairly certain I was still covered by the place I left because I was paid up through the month, but if I wasn't I could have retroactively started COBRA. But yeah would not have been without coverage.
Employee Support (Score:2)
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Exactly. The way 503(c)(6)s work now, the big donors are all anonymous and contributing to causes much more influential and nefarious than a single candidate.
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but are instead trying to improve society as a whole as some reasonable cost to themselves.
That's what they believe they might be doing, but the Marxist policies that Sanders pushes (which even contrast quite heavily with the historical policies that Democrats have espoused) would do the exact opposite. There's the famous quote from Sanders that's been posted endlessly where he praises Venezuelan socialism. At the time it may have appeared to be a reasonable thing to say, but it's aged poorly and their country is in shambles. But as long as people can keep telling themselves "But that wasn't real
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However, the notion that Venezuela's problems are largely a result of somehow having an economy based on oil production don't stand up to closer scrutiny. If you look at the data [worldbank.org], even in 2014 Venezuela's oil e
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Fine, we don't want socialism, marxism or any of the things that you think are scary words. We just want what all the other first world countries have figured out how to do.
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You mean all those homogeneous, monoculture SMALL first world countries?
That's the problem, see. The ignorance in believing that the comparison is valid. It isn't; they don't have to deal with the constraints we do, they don't have the population characteristics we do.
Diversity may be our strength ( another ignorant phrase which belies the complexity of the topic ), but it does make these things harder to achieve.
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What if we broke up into 50 (or so) little units, each with similarly homogeneous cultures. You could even do a comparison between states and countries with similar GDPs and populations. [mises.org]
It looks like Texas is about equivalent to Australia in both population and GDP. (Plus large population centers on the east and smaller towns in the west).
Australia has a minimum wage of $19.49 per hour, 18 weeks of paid parental leave, 20 days of paid vacation under federal law, and universal health care system (delivered i
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This was fairly well answered on Quora: Why do Europeans assume that what works for a tiny, ancient, homogeneous country will automatically work for a huge, young and very diverse federation of countries (the USA)? [quora.com]
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This. Nobody ever mentions this.
Re:It's almost as if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I'm not American, but I happily pay more then 50% marginal tax because it means I get to live in a society where I'll never be robbed because someone can't pay their medical bills. No mater what sort of bad luck my kid has, she will NEVER go bankrupt because she gets sick and needs medical care. These things impact the overall tone of the society you live in, and drives second-order effects that are not immediately obvious. I vote accordingly, not necessarily in my narrow "does it help my bank balance" interests but in the broader "does it make my life better" interests.
"No, young feller. I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." - Justice Holmes
Min
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If you think this motive for robbery is anything more than infinitesimal you clearly don't live in America. While medical bankruptcies are an issue, socialized medicine has its issues as well. Also keep in mind the issues for any medical system ramp with population and, pace Justice Holmes, the cost of civilization varies with demographics - i.e. it's cheaper where there's cultural homogeneity.
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Why wouldn't they? (Score:2, Insightful)
He's the top in every employment category (Score:2, Troll)
It's pretty clear everybody else is in the tank for the Establishment. Even Warren doesn't want to rock the boat much (to be fair I think it's mostly out of fear, she doesn't think she can get a progressive agenda through, she just wants to stop Wall Street from crashing the economy).
If I already know a candidate is awash in corporate cash why donate even if I support them? Let the rich folk give them mo
I didn't say I couldn't afford it (Score:2)
Bernie is out-raising the pack (Score:2)
Sanders is out-raising the pack, so I would expect that he out-raises everyone else, including those that work for Big Tech.
disruption fetish (Score:5, Interesting)
For all the wonders of the tech world, the stakes are surprisingly low in many internet areas. Disruption is easy when all you're really doing is replacing an older social website (myspace) with a shinier new one (facebook). It seems like a big thing, but 50 years from now Facebook will barely be a footnote in history. The consequences of failure in such an area are very, very low. Oh, darn, my attempt at programming an app to go viral failed. *shrugs shoulders* oh well time to move on to the next idea. If Tesla fails entirely, the world continues to spin and, eventually, someone else will make electric cars.
So, techies look at government and think that it needs to be disrupted. Haha, yeah. Study a bit of history, tech bros. Disruption of a major government usually means that people starve or a civil war that kills large numbers. It can last for decades and take many more decades to recover from. And the outcome is NOT guaranteed to be any better than the old system that was disrupted.
I'm not saying that government should stay static. Just that major disruption can have much more serious consequences. Think *very* carefully and move with caution.
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Not tha
Not really (Score:3)
There's the Green New Deal, but again not all that many new gov't employees. I'd prefer there to be (direct employement would be more cost effective than contracts) but odds are it's going to be contracts. Again, money in, money out, but no real size incre
More ability and desire to spend (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as Sanders goes, I'm in a weird position. I lean libertarian on many issues, and as far as that's concerned, Sanders is pretty distant from where I'm at. But I also think he's uniquely genuine and actually cares about the things he talks about. I remember watching him in the earlier days of YouTube (2010ish?) raising hell in the Senate, likely well before he had any Presidential aspirations. He's also passionate about the right things -- things that actually matter to people like healthcare, jobs, student loans, etc. I tend to disagree with his approach (I worry that it may do more harm than good, especially considering how much deficit spending Trump has already done), but I at least like that he's talking about the right things. I'm also not entirely certain in my own beliefs on everything; maybe he can do the things he's talking about, maybe I'm wrong. It's a very attractive message and I can see why it resonates so well with a lot of people I'd definitely be interested in seeing him come out on top, as the second most likely choice (Biden) ranks near the bottom of people I'd want to see win.
Re:More ability and desire to spend (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as Sanders goes, I'm in a weird position. I lean libertarian on many issues, and as far as that's concerned, Sanders is pretty distant from where I'm at. But I also think he's uniquely genuine and actually cares about the things he talks about.
My opinion on why Sanders is a good option: first, as you point out, I think the platforms he runs on are things he actually cares about. He's not just saying things to court voters (like every other politician does). Second, a lot of his policies are out there, but they are far enough out there that he wouldn't be able to push a lot of the crazy ones through Congress. Congress would (or should, at least with historical versions of Congress; who knows these days) dampen down the crazy a little bit.
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Big Tech Insider - why we're liberal! (Score:5, Funny)
If the Republicans were capable of balancing the budget, I would consider them, but they simply haven't delivered results...just dogma, empty promises and recently, overt racism.
Ignoring Trumpism's ties to white supremacy and the Kremlin, the RNC hasn't delivered financially. All they've done is cut taxes and underfund the government. If they balanced the budget, I could overlook the social issues, but their deficit spending is far worse than any liberal.
The economy is an ecosystem. My prosperity is dependent on people buying my company's services, not me being awesome. If the people who buy our stuff prosper, we prosper, if they suffer, our sales decline. Republican voters seem to only think of themselves and not their community. Your stupid tax cuts have huge impacts on those around you and funding government agencies. They make the rich richer and leave everyone else poorer and the government having to find ways to pay the bills creatively. Republican voters are individualists and Democratic voters are collectivists. If my company's stock rises 20%, but everyone around me suffers, this will bite me in the end...in the form of declining sales and maybe my company going out of business.
It is in my rational self interest to see my entire country prosper, particularly our customers...not the wealthy. We've had 2 decades of severely worsening income inequality. We've seen what happens and I'm not impressed. I have more faith in Bernie or whomever the DNC nominee is will bring more prosperity than Trump or Bush has.
Re:Big Tech Insider - why we're liberal! (Score:4, Interesting)
If I could see a hell of a lot less extremism in either party, they would have me.
Gerrymandering (which actually punishes politicians that compromise), and a complete disinterest in cleaning up campaign funding, pretty much ensure that's not about to happen.
Right now we have over 70% of campaign funds coming from around 80,000 households (out of 129 million). There just happen to be about 83,000 households with 50 million or more in wealth. That's not coincidence. So politicians of either side cater to them and their interests are not those of the single-digit millionaires, or even the folks living check to check.
Why do they need all that money? To buy professional assistance in manipulating the media so they can get the votes of the masses.
Ever wonder why so many people call an estate tax, or an inheritance tax, a "death tax" even though only one-percenters will ever need to be concerned about them?
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Tech workers are young... (Score:3)
Re: Big Tech Opponent? (Score:2)
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The blue collar workers were more easily bought. Lots of companies gave moderate "one-time" bonuses at the time of the big corporate tax cut - even while they get year-after-year benefits. Their employees became even bigger Trump supporters without realizing that they'd been duped.
Deficits [Re: Big Tech Opponent?] (Score:2, Informative)
I totally agree. I'm not against higher corporate taxes myself. I'm just saying that Bernie is hardly a "big tech opponent". He is just another tax-and-spend guy like all lifer DC politicians.
In historical data, Democratic administrations increase tax and cut spending (resulting in lowering the deficit), which the Republicans cut taxes and increase spending (resulting in increasing the deficit).
When Republicans are in power, their motto is "Deficits don't matter" (which is a direct quote from vice president Dick Cheney). And, true to history, the American debt has skyrocketed under the Trump administration.
But the Republicans are always all about cutting deficits when Democrats are in power. T
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Well, you're right about one thing. There are far smarter and better people.
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You don't think about how poor you're going to be once the tax rate goes up to 80%
How can I be poor when I will be living in the state-controlled land of milk and honey, the worker's paradise, where everything will be free and wonderful and brought to me by people who can't even get a fucking caucus right...
Re: it's easy to be socialist when you have money (Score:2)
You start out by claiming that âoeitâ(TM)s easy to be socialist when you have moneyâ and then you end by claiming that the people who are socialists are broke poetry majors. Perhaps, with the benefit of a university education, you could have learned a thing or two about logical consistency.
However, it does appear as if you have studied literary devices, as indicates by your username, which is a great example of irony.