The deficit

[Embar Angylwrath]

I love the way ya'll crack on the poor to solve your budgetary problems and focus on ways to increase their problems.

And whats your plan for bringing them out of poverty?

[Partha]

It certainly isn't yours.

Personally, I favor "choice" taxes over income taxes (a variation on a sales tax). We already have some of that as a "luxury" tax. We could use more of that. I would tax:
1. All foods that are nutrtionally deficient, which includes most fast foods, snack foods, soda, etc. Obesity drives 10% of our annual healthcare costs. Don't ban the foods (if you really want to call them that), but treat them like liquor and smokes.

Brilliancy. Have you actually considered exactly WHY this hits poor people the hardest? The cheapest stuff is the unhealthiest. Sure, I'd love for everyone to be able to eat free-range chicken and drink designer juices rather than crap - but the poorest (whose wages have declined over the last few decades, by the by) can't afford that stuff. Further, the production levels from organic farms as it is now just barely meets demand - force poor people into that market and watch demand drive the prices higher. Yeah, I LOVE starving the poor. Don't you?

2. Cars that have a low mpg. Again, don't ban them, but if someone wants to drive a gaz-guzzling hog (as I do), make them pay for the priveledge through a tax.

Of course, you forget (or ignore) two things. 1) Poor people don't drive shitty cars with bad gas mileage because they hate the environment - rather, again, their choices are limited due to income. 2) Thanks to conservatives and their 'big government is evil' kick, funding for public transport that would alleviate poor people's need for shitty cars has been cut and cut again. If you're serious about it, you're talking massive government investment into building light AND heavy rail and expanding public transit. Of course, this would have the side effect of producing construction jobs and increasing your taxes, so I'm pretty sure you find that a non-starter. Otherwise, you're perfectly able to buy your local 'strapping young buck' a Prius so's he'll quit destroying your environment.

I'd also eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, but grandfather in (or slowly phase out over time) those that have already made a home purchase. The government shouldn't be favoring homeonwers over renters, and I say that as a homeowner who takes advantage of that sweet deduction every year.

Erm, no. Homeowners make for better neighbors, because they have skin in the game. What's needed is tighter regulation of the wild wild west of the housing market, to protect the less-protected buyer from having their lifeblood sucked out by variable rates and hidden charges. The wall for ownership also has to be raised - private lenders have shown time and time again they will fleece people not capable of buying a home for an increase in their quarterly profit.

I'd cut defense spending, especially if the Pentagon says it doesn't want something. Like the F-35 engine, which was crammed down the throat of the Pentagon even when Gates said it wasn't needed. The spending prioities in the Pentagon are absurd. Do we really put the US at risk when we all the ships afloat and we're building outnumber the next 13 navies COMBINED? (Eleven of which are allies). Is it really necessary that by 2010 we have a 20-1 advantage over China in stealth fighters? Military spending has more than doubled since the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon has a beuracracy as bloated as as Washington. Time to cut spending there, but we have people in congress trying to protect jobs in their districts/states, and when any cut comes up that threatens jobs, they work to sink it. Shameful.

NOW you're getting somewhere. End these unproductive occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and get that spending off the books for good, and not off the books for accounting tricks.

And.. if we need to deficit spend, we would be well advised to put that spending in areas that are investments in America's future. That means infrastructure, energy and education. Hardening our grids against failure (be that EMP attack, solar flares, what have you) would create jobs and also have a lasting benefit. Investment and government support in sustainable and renewable energy, with an effort ala the moon shot, is a great investment. The US absolutely needs to find alternative energy sources. We can't rely on the mid-east (and, if they flip us the bird, go begging to Canada), for oil.

We'll make a dirty hippie of you yet. And yes, in a recession, you need to deficit spend. The key is, when the recession is over, you have to start paying that debt, and I'd love to see heavy duty legislation on the matter.

Finally...as with any group or organization, the best investment is in the minds of those in the group. Our K-12 system is broken. It needs to be revamped, bottom to top. I bet if we combined a pay package based on location AND performance, we'd get better teachers and administrators to move into challenged districts, which would help educate those that need it the most. But the unions oppose that. God forbid there be a stratification in the performance of teachers.

The unions, as far as I can tell, don't oppose that, but that's not what's being offered. What's being offered are continued rounds of staffing cuts. What's being offered is not flexibility of teaching standards but instead straightjacketing all instruction to a standardized test and then threats of firing if a school doesn't come up to standards - regardless of how the individual teachers do. What's being offered is also a threat that if they can't work miracles (better education on a smaller budget), then their jobs will be lost and the system will be given over to private companies who pay their employees less. Good choices there.

So... tax usuage of certain products, spend on investment, eliminate fucked-up spending. Anyone have a problem with that?

Parts of it, yes. Other parts, not so much. At least you're not being Steve Forbes and whining about the Fairy Tax.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

rilliancy. Have you actually considered exactly WHY this hits poor people the hardest? The cheapest stuff is the unhealthiest. Sure, I'd love for everyone to be able to eat free-range chicken and drink designer juices rather than crap - but the poorest (whose wages have declined over the last few decades, by the by) can't afford that stuff. Further, the production levels from organic farms as it is now just barely meets demand - force poor people into that market and watch demand drive the prices higher. Yeah, I LOVE starving the poor. Don't you?

I have to call bullshit on this. No one's talking about sin taxing everything below free-range meat and organic crops. What Embar specifically mentions taxing is the junk food; potato chips, sugared soda, McDonald's. Actually taking one's ass to the grocery store and buying shit that isn't made entirely of fats and sugars isn't wallet breaking. And for those for whom it is prohibitively expensive to go grocery shopping, there's already a mechanism in place. I would know, my household received EBT payments for 4 months last year, and I was pleasantly surprised by not only the amount we received (For 3 adults + 1 toddler), but by how far it actually stretched when we were intelligent with our grocery shopping. Hell, we fed 2-3 friends a night for the first week with all the food we cooked, and still had plenty to last the rest of the month.

Fact remains that I can purchase the materials necessary to make a tuna noodle casserole for as much as it costs to pick up a bag of potato chips and a 12 pack of soda. And the casserole will feed a family while water remains a much healthier alternative to Coke or Mt Dew. I can sufficiently feed four people cheaper by going to the grocery store than I can by ordering exclusively from a fast food joint's dollar menu. PBJs are less than a dollar in materials. Raw ingredients to make pancakes/waffles, again, dirt cheap. Not to mention I've never encountered a grocery store that doesn't have a generic alternative for damn near every product they carry (Whole Foods aside perhaps, but I sure as fuck don't shop there and I seriously doubt anyone below the poverty line is, either).

Soda is definitely cheaper than the bottled juices, though. I'm not sure about the concentrate stuff. Either way, water is infinitely better for us than soda, so the point as I see it remains moot. Either way, I stand by the fact that shopping for real groceries that require some level of effort to prepare remains much cheaper than chips, Little Debbie snacks, pop tarts, McDonald's and Taco Bell.

Add into that a tax added to junk food and fast food would sure as fuck encourage a new market for inexpensive healthy foods. I'd wager more than one fast food joint would shape itself up to meet the nutritional standards necessary to avoid the tax altogether.

And finally, I say this as someone who drinks 3-4 12oz cans of Mt Dew a day. I love the shit, but if it cost me ~$5/can, I'd drink one or two a week and stick to water otherwise. And I'd probably cut my chances of developing diabetes in half in the process.

[Torakus]

Adding to the above,

I seriously doubt that Embar was talking about taxing some poor dudes gas guzzling junker. I believe what he is referring to is a tax on new sales, though taxing sales of used gas guzzlers to push the poor toward more fuel efficient used cars wouldn't be a bad idea either. Perhaps I am becoming a little NS in my old age, but the time when Americans were entitled to make stupid life decisions is over. We just can't afford it anymore.

Tora

[Embar Angylwrath]

Both Tora and Jaro were correct in their interpretation of my post, and Jaro literally ripper your protest apart. You don't have to eat organic to eat heathier.

As to Toar, correct. Tax gaz-guzzlers at the time of first sale. Maybe add a percentage point to the sale of the vehicle for every MPG the miss the national standard by. I don't like Dd's idea of adding a gas tax and then rebating businesses.... to easy to rig. If we're sending stimulus checks to dead people and criminals (the utility assistance checks) there's no way the government could handle the business rebates, and it would take the formation of another government entity to do so, or add to the personnel requirements of an existing one.

And are you truly saying the unions don't oppose the elimination of tenure????

[Partha]

Jaro, have you considered that many people don't live within easy range of a grocery store? They're called 'food deserts'.

http://asap.sustainability.uiuc.edu/mem ... ummary.pdf

This is a much more difficult problem than can be solved by 'tax the chips!' Like so many other problems, it affects the poorest, minorities, and the elderly the hardest. They don't go to the grocery store, they go to the convenience store or the closer burger joint - which isn't required to stock their larders with healthy foods. But yeah, it's all the poor people's fault, if it makes you feel better or superior.

[Partha]

And are you truly saying the unions don't oppose the elimination of tenure????

That's not what you were talking about in your first post. You were talking about incentive bases for teachers to take on more challenged schools. Now at least you've admitted what your real goal was, which is to break the contracts formed in negotiations with the cities in order to screw the workers. We are impressed at your consistency.

[Embar Angylwrath]

And are you truly saying the unions don't oppose the elimination of tenure????

That's not what you were talking about in your first post. You were talking about incentive bases for teachers to take on more challenged schools. Now at least you've admitted what your real goal was, which is to break the contracts formed in negotiations with the cities in order to screw the workers. We are impressed at your consistency.

But its what I said on the second page of this thread, had you looked.

Do you disagree that tenure is an obstacle to helping cull bad teachers? And do you disagree with a pay-for-performance plan to draw good teachers into challenged school districts?

[Jarochai Alabaster]

But yeah, it's all the poor people's fault, if it makes you feel better or superior.

You are a master of reading intent where there was none.

Regardless, food deserts sound like a product of the exact same forces that keep poor neighborhoods poor. No, I don't believe it's the poor people's fault, (For the record, I've lived in poverty) and as with the rest of poverty itself and the issues that surround it there's not going to be an easy answer. What are your suggestions for recovering the local economies of impoverished communities?

I do believe in strong public transit. Omaha is easily large enough to support a light rail system, but instead we have a fleet of two dozen buses that don't actually follow their scheduled stops. If we had a transit system capable of reasonably getting people around town at all hours of the day, I personally wouldn't own a car. And I certainly wouldn't mind paying the taxes associated.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Food deserts.... HILARIOUS.

Are there grocery stores within 10-20 miles of their house?

--If yes: Do they have transporation?

---- If yes: Drive there. (Why wouldn't they drive there?)

---- If no: Is there Public Transit available that can get them to and from?

------ If yes: Use Public Transit. (Why wouldn't they use Public transit?)

------ If No: Where the heck are they living, Atlanta?

--If no: Where the heck are they living, the middle of an ACTUAL desert?

[Embar Angylwrath]

Did anyone see in that report what the max distance was from anyone location to a grocery store? I didn't. And if you assumed the worst and said that all the "red" districts had zero grocery stores (I wonder how many of them are zoned "industrial" with little to no population, other than transient), the max distance between any red district and a blue district (which I'm assuming has at least 1 grocery store) appears to be about 12 miles. And most "red districts appear to be within 5 miles of a "blue" district. I'm taking an average dimension of Chicago of 30 miles x 60 miles.

Five miles to a grocery store for the overwhelming majority of "red" districts doesn't seem to burdensome to me. I travel 3 miles to my nearest grocery store.

[Partha]

Now, Embar, imagine you're a single mother with no car. Or an elderly person. Now how does five miles sound? You presuppose everyone is like you, with easy access to transport and the ability to move a large amount of groceries easily. A solution for you is no solution for a number of people, man.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I've seen plenty of people use public transit after having shopped at the store, both Taxi and Bus. People could carpool with friends to the store as well. Theres options so long as people utilize them.

[Torakus]

God forbid we ask them to take responsibility for themselves and figure out how to get five miles to the grocery store. Much easier to feed the kids Jack in the Box and then blame the man for our problems.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Now, Embar, imagine you're a single mother with no car. Or an elderly person. Now how does five miles sound? You presuppose everyone is like you, with easy access to transport and the ability to move a large amount of groceries easily. A solution for you is no solution for a number of people, man.

Lets run with that, shall we?

If Im elderly, I really dont need to move a large amount of groceries, do I? And while it may be difficult to move much outside the home, once you're past a couple of blocks, it all becomes the same effort. And most elderly I know cant stomach fast food anyway...

And if the single mother with no car has to get to a job, she knows how to use mass transit. Let me ask you this Partha... if all the fast food joints in the red zones suddenly disappeared, do you think all the single mothers would throw uo their hands and let their kids starve? Or do you think they'd find a way to get to the grocery store?

[Ddrak]

Partha's idea that poor people eat away from home (ie at a junk food store) more than rich people isn't held up by studies that look at exactly that metric:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib773/

"The wealthiest households tended to spend a greater share of their food budget on eating away from home than the least wealthy households: 47 percent versus 36 percent in 1998."

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/DietQu ... exible.htm

Number of meals per week not prepared at home by percentage of the poverty threshold:

eatout.png

Taxing junk food will not hit the poor harder than the rich.

Dd

[Ddrak]

It should also be noted that the "food desert" papers define zones by their distance relative to the average, not relative to some fixed measure. That makes it relatively worthless in determining which people actually have difficulty reaching grocers but merely shows you that shopkeepers prefer to set up shops in wealthier and whiter areas. I really don't think we needed a big study to tell us that much.

That fact also makes the "newsflash" claims put out by Mari Gallagher that she's finding "50% of Detroit in a food desert" can really be read as "50% of Detroit has above average distances to grocers". I guess it goes hand in hand with "50% of people have a below average intelligence"?

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

This discussion reminds me of the comedy routine by the late Sam Kinison when he was talking about people starving in Ethiopia.

"Don't send them food, send them U-Hauls! They live in a fucking desert!"

[Partha]

Ddrak: Bullshit. From the next page you pulled that quote from:

For example, the poorest households spent about 35 percent of their income on food in 1990 and 33 percent in 1998. In contrast, the richest households spent only about 8 percent in 1990 and about 7.5 percent in 1998.

Tell us again how a tax that potentially hits a third of a poor person's budget is so much less onerous than one that hits one-twelfth of a rich guy's budget. That's the purest definition of a regressive tax you've found. Oh, yeah - and we weren't specifically talking about just McDonalds type stuff - convenience stores and drugstores with a grocery section also qualify. Thanks for missing half the argument.

Embar: Nice lack of empathy. 'It's all the same past the first couple of blocks.' Asshole. I also like the way you're moving the goalposts now to exclusively fast food, with Dd's help.

Also, let's look at mass transit. I'll use my town (Rockford, IL) as an example.

Bus maps Here. List of food locations Here.

Start filtering out the service stations and convenience stores, and I can tell you for a fact that there are exactly four grocery stores worthy of the name west of the river, all but one in the North. If you live off of a bus route, transport means walking to the nearest route, riding downtown and transferring to another bus to get to one of those stores. Then after you get out of the store, frequently (because bus service is one way on many routes on the west side of the river) you have to ride back downtown and transferring again. Shopping becomes not an impulse, but a multihour planned event where in the end, the amount of groceries you bring home is predicated on how much you can carry safely. Also, if you work any kind of second shift job, you're screwed, because night routes are few and far between. Of course, one could also accept that you're going to pay extra to shop closer to home and not have a variety of foods and end up going to the nearby drugstore instead. A tax that turns that equation around and encourages people to 'eat healthy' will by definition have to cost more than the public transport and time factor...which makes it way too goddamned high to be foisting on fixed income elderly and poor single mothers. And that's a reality across America, medium sized towns like mine and large cities like Chicago that you haven't got a goddamned clue about because for you, food has always been within easy reach.

In short, mass transit is not the complete answer to any of these problems. All you have to do is Google 'CTA cuts' to see exactly how much they're getting slammed, and this is a problem not just localized to Illinois - most if not all states have been hit hard by the recession and have scaled back public transport. Instead of acknowledging that this is not a problem that's going to be solved easily or cheaply, though, you just go ahead and keep fucking your personal chicken.

[Embar Angylwrath]

I didn't limit it to just fast food Partha, I limitied it to basically junk food (which includes most fast food). Im pretty sure you know the difference between a potato, a french fry, and a potato chiop, and can pick out whats healthier and what isn't. And you never answered my question... if all fast food joints and convenience stores just up and disappeared, what to you think those people would do? Sit there in the house and starve? I bet they'd find a way to hit the grocery store. Oh yeah... a lot of groceries stores deliver now, especially to disabled and elderly households.