mrapchem
Apprentice
I'm happy that I was able to do this.
I'm happy that I was able to do this.
Say what? The question asked why was only about Asians. I answered based on what little I know of Asians and their culture.
All good man appreciate the explanation
Good post. Everything is about what everyone else needs to be doing and at no point is personal responsibility even a minor talking point. It doesn't even factor into the equation.
I think it's bizarre this even has to be said, but everyone has the capacity for racism, and anyone pretending it's only on one particular side truly doesn't understand the core issue at all.
While I agree that hunting people down and ruining them for something they said is wrong, in the context of FChamp he straight up broke the rules of pro tour and combined with his very consisent history of being a shitty person I think the response to him being unable to compete is perfectly fair. If my place of work has a zero tolerance rule for racism and bigotry, and I go and make a bad watermelon joke during an extremely volatile and racially charged current events situation there's no way I could be surprised about losing my job for it.
You literally have me no context and just told me I was part of the problem. I don't see that as me telling you anything wasn't racist. I asked. I tried.
While I agree with @FonicSox that an enormous amount of things getting better lies in personal responsibility, there's also a lot here that I agree with you about. Mainly the levels of racism and xenophobia on a global scale and the atrocious things that happen elsewhere; and on a personal IRL level, people I've known for ages parading themselves as cancel culture vultures for attention, when they themselves have more sexual harassment skeletons in the closet than they can count, and are only years removed from being full-blown bigots vehemently opposed to Obama becoming President.
Bro, on a completely off-topic and lighthearted note because it's Pinot Grigio night and I'm feeling feelings, you've enlightened me to so much stuff that I feel compelled to tip my hat and say thankya. If I succeed in running for President of the United States of Mortal Kombat, I'd love for you to be my Vice President; the total opposite of Dick Cheney who can help get shit done when I'm hopelessly in over my head.
I thank you for your kind words.
All of your proposals, with the exception of reparations as not all territories had slavery, already exist as official policies in northern and western Europe, where the low and middle class have a lower standard of living than in the United States., which includes people on welfare. In order to pay for universal healthcare, education, and reparations, taxes collected from corporations and the wealthy, which would cause certain repercussions on its own, would provide insufficient funds. The government would also be required to substantially raise taxes on middle-class Americans. Please understand that I am not some screaming conservative who is engaging in fearmongering on Fox News or Talk Radio because taxes have increased by a couple of percentage points. I would gladly and proudly pay a little bit more in taxes so that a poor black child in the ghetto has access to school busing, free lunches, and up-to-date textbooks. However, the middle-class in Germany, for example, does not pay a little bit more in taxes. My cousin who is an unmarried kindergarten teacher earns as much money as I do, but she pays 50% in income taxes, which, in my opinion, is antithetical to hard work, small businesses, and upward social mobility. By contrast, I pay about 22% of federal income taxes and, again, I would not mind paying a little bit more to give equal opportunity to folks who were born under unfortunate circumstances. On the other hand, equal opportunity does not necessarily lead to equality of results, which brings me to Crimson's post.
Because I know how much you appreciate facts and statistics, I am going to quote Dr. Thomas Sowell who studied this subject extensively.
As I have posted before, the reality is that the majority of homicides are intraracial, meaning that white people kill white people and black people kill black people. Intraracial murders make a boring news story and an even more boring online article that will not be clicked on. This inconvenient fact also disproves the liberal delusion that most black men die at the hands of racist police officers. If Black Lives Matter genuinely cared about black lives, they would look inward.
Absofuckinglutely, my friend.
Dave gets drunken appreciation as well, for being the person who says the things that might make people uncomfortable opinion-wise, but does his damndest to be rooted in facts and statistics to back his beliefs up, and has never in all the times I've read his words (outside of his anti-zoning campaign against Smoke) come from a place of disdain or enmity. I am adding BLM to the list along with Chicago of things I need to learn more about so I can have a more accurate frame of reference.
Again, nobody is skirting around personal responsibility, but neither that, nor what happened in Chicago has anything to do with the topic of this thread or the threat that Black people face at the hands of police and their fellow non-Black Americans.
These proposals are indeed common in European countries, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that every single one of the numerous countries that have all the aforementioned policies have a low/middle class that is worse off than in the United States. Europeans in just about every country have free education, free healthcare and a much more vibrant safety net than we have here. You're going to need to deliver numerous reputable receipts to prove that claim - I too have relatives overseas (in London) and they are in no rush at all to move here.
In this article by the Pew Research Center, which Wikipedia describes as a "nonpartisan think tank", Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher, writes that "the disposable (after-tax) incomes of middle-class households... in 10 Western European countries in the study trailed well behind the American middle class." The only exception is Luxembourg, which the author describes as "a virtual city-state where the median income was $71,799" in 2010. The income was $60,844 in America in the same year. The author acknowledges that the middle class in America "may be smaller", though. I lived in Europe half my live and I visited Germany last summer. I can anecdotally confirm the numbers based on my middle-class relatives and friends who reside in Cologne and Stuttgart. I would concede the argument that the reason they make less money is because they pay more in income taxes for social and educational services such as universal healthcare and free college, but I believe that Americans have more freedom to spend their money however they wish because of less taxation. You can view tax rates for most European countries here. As you can see, the tax rate is almost as high as 60% in some countries. I am not sure that you can convince the majority of Americans of any race to pay such amount in taxes.
You have the same rights as any white person in America. You mentioned the Constitution, in which the 14th amendment grants any American citizen equal protection of the laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.
I really don't see how a trailing MIDDLE-CLASS income means they're "worse off". Don't really see the point of discussing middle-class either, if we're talking exposed demographics. I can anecdotally confirm (...
) that when I had an acute pneumonia in Ohio, I had to pay $130 for the steroid shot, despite my shitty student insurance. Do you account for the larger economical buffer needed and / or cost of personal insurance when comparing US wages to european wages? What about average days of vacation in the US?
I never implied that Western Europeans are "worse off." I stated that the standard of living is higher for the American middle class, which is statistically accurate.I really don't see how a trailing MIDDLE-CLASS income means they're "worse off". Don't really see the point of discussing middle-class either, if we're talking exposed demographics. I can anecdotally confirm (...
Germany has a progressive income tax that tops out at 45% of personal income. They also have a 5.5% surcharge, I assume that's how they got to the 50%. For your cousin to be in the 50% range, their personal income would be about 270K Euros per year, or the equivalent of over $300K US. For the US, 22% bracket would be $40K-$84K. That translates to about 75K euros per year at most. That would top them out at the 42% bracket.
It looks like that article simply used median income as a definition of standard of living, but I think that leaves out things like services that governments provide. I think it's fair to say that the American Middle Class generally has more after tax available income, but I'm not sure that income alone is the best measure of standard of living. A lot of that is probably simply due to the fact that taxes in America are lower for the middle class, as you've stated before.
Disposable income is not the measure of how well off you are. Disposable income is simply income after taxes. European taxes pay not just for 'other people' -- they pay for the the payee's education, health care, social services etc.
A lot of conservatives take advantage of people not really understanding how progressive income tax systems work to try and scare people.
Ain't that the truth...
The timing of you changing your tag line doesn’t really matter. It’s the fact that it mocks BLM. Honestly, you’re really outing yourself with saying “REEEEE” and SJW at anyone who thinks what Fchamp did was totally classless and stupid as hell and deserving of punishment.
(1) Yes, but the problem is the payee has no choice in the matter with regards to the quality of education, healthcare and social services --> They are locked in to whatever the government comes up with. That's why I would rather not have other people pay for my government-issued education, healthcare and social services --> lower taxes, on the other hand, let me keep more of the money I have earned, which then allows me to decide for myself what kind of education, healthcare and social services I want to get for me/my family.