Progressives (Liberals)

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@ADL
🚨NEW REPORT🚨
White supremacist groups dramatically increased their propaganda efforts in 2018, targeting neighborhoods and college campuses through “flash mob” style events and literature distributions.
http://bit.ly/2tS0DkI

And no one has gone to jail yet.

MY point, and tell me if you agree, is that it is quite possible for most of the country’s 15 million millionaires to have made their million dollars without having millionaire parents. Even teachers can do it (and I’ve seen a story that says 5% of them do).

Here's another thing that makes me seethe with anger.

A professor at Harvard is being target with protests and graffiti for defending Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein is, of course, a loathsome scummy piece of poop. But our western culture could surely not have achieved what it has in civic life without granting the right of everyone accused of a crime to a competent defense attorney.

I think in a nutshell you are saying that people if they make decent or above average salaries, if they are disciplined and fugal and stick to a budget with all their vacations and such like, they can be at least millionaires.

What others are saying is "life happens when your busy making other plans", to quote John Lennon. When you mix in all of life issues which can come up which end up taking a lot of money, say a special needs child, or a very sick child or someone in your family you are responsible and/or care for even yourself, expenses even unrelated to actual health care cost, add up quickly. Other emergencies happen to you or your loved ones.

This is way off topic, but if you start saving $270.51 per month at age 22, increase your savings by 2% annually applied monthly (as your salary rises through your career) and make 6% annually compounded monthly (very reasonable) you will have $1 million after 45 years at age 67.

401Ks are not as good as pensions used to be. A pension is guaranteed. If the market crashes, 401Ks start dwindling fast.

Amid strikes in multiple states, students take a stand in support of their teachers

Across the country, students have been showing up at picket lines, walking out, and speaking up.

When Geraldo Rivera has a more nuanced perspective on Israel than most establishment democrats, we have a serious problem

The first thing you want to do obviously is take the money flows we already have and divert them into the Medicare system. That is easier said than done.

I’ve been trying to think about how to do it in a way that’s also not regressive, by imposing substantially more cost on low-earners who currently receive Medicaid. Because that’s a criticism people will make. Any tax you use is going to make low earners pay more than they currently pay because they don’t pay anything.

My idea is to completely overhaul the whole payroll tax system in the US. The United States has three payroll taxes. Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits. The way they work is unemployment insurance applies to people to the first $7,000 of earnings. Social Security applies to the first $125,000. Then Medicare applies to all earnings, plus you have the additional Medicare tax that pops in above $200,000.

It is a regressive structure. The first dollar of earnings is hit with the full unemployment tax, the full Social Security tax, the full Medicare tax. Then those taxes fall off until you’re left with the 2 percent Medicare tax at the high earnings.

So let’s squeeze all of those into flat taxes. Instead of charging, like we do with unemployment benefits, 6 percent on the first $7,000 of earnings, you can knock that down to less than 1 percent on all earnings. You can do that with Social Security as well. Knock that down and apply it to all earnings. Medicare would be unchanged.

That then opens up a lot of space in the low to mid-earners to apply a higher Medicare tax without there being a net tax increase. Because their unemployment tax has gone down substantially. Their Social Security tax has gone down substantially. Then you can do a flat Medicare tax and the net effect is it’s all falling on people making more than $100,000 a year.

Here's a pretty classic example showing why we need to monitor our information sources.

Do you feel the same way about the treatment of conservative speakers on a fairly large number of university campuses?