Monday, August 15, 2016

Trump - Clinton Plans

Based on the plans Clinton discussed last week, I am moving back towards preferring Trump.  She definitely is pandering towards the Sanders far Left crowd...


NPR Plans
FOX Plans
CNN Money Fact Check
CNN Money Clinton Plan Creates Jobs
CNN Family Plan

42 comments:

Sean said...

And Trump is pandering to idiots who think he can deliver a free lunch. Just another Republican who thinks that you can drastically cut taxes and increase spending and everything will be wonderful.

John said...

And Clinton seems to be doubling down on the Democratic Party position that promising to raises taxes on the "rich" to give more free stuff to the "Not Rich" will help our country be successful.

Instead of ObamaBucks, should we now call them "Clinton Bucks".

John said...

I don't think either of these folks are talking about the very important stuff.

Like how they are going to "stop leaving kids behind in the Public Education system / hold unqualified/irresponsible Parents accountable."

Clinton wants to apparently give everyone free pre-k and less expensive college education. Neither of which will do much to close the gap, since the all kids will get it. Unfortunately the Unlucky / Dumb kids will still be Unlucky / Dumb...

jerrye92002 said...

Really? Could you provide some compare-and-contrast evidence, please? Hillary seems to think she can raise taxes, put whole industries out of work and everything will be wonderful.

Sean said...

"And Clinton seems to be doubling down on the Democratic Party position that promising to raises taxes on the "rich" to give more free stuff to the "Not Rich" will help our country be successful."

It's certainly more successful than cutting taxes on the rich and giving more free stuff to the rich.

jerrye92002 said...

Clinton's problem, looked at objectively, is that she is promising to do the impossible. You can't make college cheaper without cutting costs-- professors and subjects and fancy buildings and administrative costs. You can't give away free college and pay professors anything at all, any more than you can give away health care without reducing doctor pay to zero. You can't increase the minimum wage without increasing unemployment. "Sooner or later, you run out of other people's money."

Sean said...

"You can't make college cheaper without cutting costs-- professors and subjects and fancy buildings and administrative costs."

Clinton's plan includes such reforms to cut costs.

John said...

Moody's Trump Plan

Moody's Clinton Plan

Plan Comparison

John said...

Sean,
Anyone who supports public employee unions, tenure, steps/lanes, etc simply can not be serious about working to reduce the costs of Government.

The Seniority / Bureaucracy laden system is what drives those HIGH costs.

John said...

Sean,
"It's certainly more successful than cutting taxes on the rich and giving more free stuff to the rich." I guess I disagree, and other than tax breaks. What free stuff are you thinking of?

My rationale is that giving people stuff that reduced the negative consequences of:
- being an unmarried parent,
- not being successful in school,
- being a spender,
- not working hard,
- etc

seems to have given us more unmarried parents, unsuccessful students, spenders, fussy workers, etc. Which makes sense...

Letting married, smart, savers/investors, who work hard keep and invest / give to charity more of their money seems more logical.

Sean said...

"What free stuff are you thinking of?"

Trump's child care plan is of huge benefit to high-income taxpayers, not so much so for low-income taxpayers. The whole plan is -- with the exception of the carried interest exception -- designed to benefit wealthy folks over those he's claiming to speak for.

John said...

Is this the plan you are talking about?

jerrye92002 said...

Trump's child care plan won't give much to somebody that can already afford it out of a high income. It can make a huge difference to someone who cannot pay for child care out of the meager starting salary. In essence, it's a barrier to single mothers finding work and getting off welfare. So, Trump has the right idea. Having taxpayers pay for it might even be worthwhile.

And I simply cannot understand why the liberal definition of "fair" includes ever-increasing "soak the rich" ideas when the top 1% already pay almost 1/2 of all the taxes. Deride it all you want, but "trickle down" is actually the way the economy works. Capital will move to where it will return best, and having very high taxes will drive the local economy DOWN, not up. In short, Hillary's plan is based on the usual liberal nostrums and delusions. Trump's at least has a chance.

John said...

Do you deem this to be sign of success?

"A record 40% of households with children include "breadwinner moms," according to a report out today.

These moms are the sole or primary source of income for households with children younger than 18, a Pew Research Center analysis finds. The analysis looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

"The share of households with children where there is a mother who is the sole or primary breadwinner is up about fourfold from 1960, when it was only 11%," says report co-author Kim Parker, associate director of Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project." PEW Source

John said...

Jerry,
I think you should have read the article I linked to.

Sean is correct that deductions do not help low income folks...

Of course Clinton's solution is goofy too. "By way of comparison, Hillary Clinton’s plan, released several months ago, has a specific focus on opening doors for middle- and low-income children to thrive by capping child care expenses for families by a percentage of their income through tax credits and subsidized child care; as well as boosting pay for child care workers and other improvements in quality of care."

Now the tax payers will be paying for healthcare, food, and childcare for those who have more children than they can afford... Does it ever end???

jerrye92002 said...

You mean the Huffington Post article? On the wholly unwarranted assumption that the article portrays Trump's plan accurately, it is nonetheless obvious that neither his nor Clinton's plan bear any resemblance to the liberal utopia imagined. And isn't it time we stop being so worried that the "rich" might benefit from some policy that we refuse to allow the rest to benefit at all?

John said...

Besides the fact that usually the deductions and credits are phased out for higher incomes.

jerrye92002 said...

Yes, it is symptomatic of that "soak the rich" mentality. First, we build social engineering into the tax code-- encouraging people to use child care, for example-- and then discourage certain people from doing what the social engineers want. The best tax code is one that treats every dollar equally, regardless of where earned or where spent or how many others came or went with it. That would be a perfect flat tax, preferably based on consumption, and as a practical matter would need to include a significant "family deduction" to turn that flat tax into a perfectly progressive one. What we have now is neither flat nor perfectly progressive, and it is progressive for some and regressive for others. It needs to be scrapped and replaced with individual programs (like a child care subsidy) that is clean and tracked for efficiency to purpose.

jerrye92002 said...

That should read OVERLY progressive for some and regressive for others. Unfair, in other words.

Sean said...

"Besides the fact that usually the deductions and credits are phased out for higher incomes."

Trump's own website says nothing about a phase-out.

jerrye92002 said...

Well, there is such a thing as a "natural" phase-out. Somebody making $20K/year and getting a $3K subsidy sees a 15% effective increase in income. Somebody making $200K per year and getting the same $3K subsidy sees an effective 1.5% increase. It doesn't seem even remotely fair to arbitrarily shrink that further.

John said...

OOPS... I deleted Sean's comment by accident. Thankfully they get emailed to me also...

"The typical person making $20K a year is going to get $0 in benefit from the Trump plan. So all you're doing with the Trump plan is subsidizing child care for people who don't need a subsidy." Sean

John said...

Ironically, that is what Dayton and the Democrats are proposing when they want to give free Pre-K to everyone. Even those who could afford it.

Well that and they wanted to create more Union jobs for their Ed MN friends.

jerrye92002 said...

OK, so because some people at the upper income scale benefit more than those at lower incomes, we should deny this benefit to everybody? Wouldn't it be good to establish the idea of subsidized care, and then come back and add to it those who might get more benefit from it? If that's the price of getting work requirements BACK into welfare, it seems like a good idea.

Sean said...

"Wouldn't it be good to establish the idea of subsidized care, and then come back and add to it those who might get more benefit from it?"

No, we should subsidize it only for those who need it subsidized.

John said...

Sean,
Excellent !!! Then we are aligned that Dayton's Universal pre-school drive was a bad idea!!! :-)

John said...

Now if the Government provides:
- Food stamps
- Welfare
- Medicare
- Heating subsidies
- Work tax credits
- Child tax credits
- Childcare tax credits / subsidies

Do we get to claim that their tax rate is incredibly negative?
And that they truly are a burden on the country?

It may be worth giving them this if I never have to hear that the effective tax rate on low income people is too high... Or that they have to live on minimum wage...

Talking about false equivalence...

John said...

Please remember that this is on top of society investing ~$200,000 per child to allow them the opportunity to seize an education and avoid all these poverty pain lessening freebies.

Sean said...

Yes, you're correct. I did not favor Dayton's pre-K proposal. I support expanding access to pre-K, but not the way Dayton proposed.

jerrye92002 said...

"No, we should subsidize it only for those who need it subsidized." -- Sean

Well, that too is very sensible, but it would be one more federal program on top of the 80 or so overlapping and ineffective "welfare" programs we have. If we're talking ideals, I would favor a refundable credit, or better yet a negative income tax with that being an allowable deduction. Better even than those would be the FAIR tax, where child care would be taxed but low income people would get a rebate to cover the tax on it and all other "necessities."

The fundamental has to be that this is an expense to allow you to go to work, like you can now deduct the cost of work uniforms. If it's going to be directly subsidized, yes, you limit government spending by limiting it to those that need it. If you're going to do it through the tax code, where people get to keep some of their own money for doing what government "wants" them to do, then everybody should get it.

John said...

Jerry,
You are the school voucher fan... How would this be different?

It would just be limited to low income households.

jerrye92002 said...

Everything depends on how it is done. If it is done as a tax deduction it should go to everybody but obviously won't help low incomes. If it is done as a tax credit, same thing. If it is done as a /refundable/ tax credit, everybody should get it and the poor would benefit, percentage-wise, much more than the rich.

If the government creates and runs child-care centers, it would be the public schools all over again. If the government pays the childcare provider directly, on the parent's behalf, you get government control. The best way to do this is through vouchers for child care that the parent controls, taking it to whatever private (or public) child care facility they choose.

I guess it comes down to which you trust more, the parent of the child given the ability to make child care decisions, or Hillary's "village."

jerrye92002 said...

Here's another take (could work with child care as well as schooling), with the government doing almost nothing except "allowing" it:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/black-families-georgia-find-alternative-public-school?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6411659&utm_content=newsletter(6411659)&utm_term=newsletter

John said...

ITO Black Families Find Alternative

John said...

This has to be one of the biggest "no duh" quotes. But it is comparing apples and cantaloupe, since it compares results of a school system's general population to that of a specific set of kids who are lucky to have Parents who are dedicated to their academic success.

Otherwise the concept sounds great. It is just like when Parents move to a better neighborhood, open enroll their child to Wayzata, send them to a Private school, home school, enroll them in a good charter, etc. Things improve quickly as the unlucky kids are left behind.


"Research backs up the opinion that minority children can be challenged to do better – and even do better – in a homeschool environment. A 2015 study conducted by Brian Ray found that black homeschool students scored in the 68th percentile in reading, the 56th percentile in language, and the 50th percentile in math. By contrast, black public school students scored in the 25th, 30th, and 28th percentiles of the same areas (chart)."

jerrye92002 said...

So once again one asks, why would we not allow more families to choose the same advantages for their kids, and how many more would do so given the means to escape those failing public schools? Since only a few states allow this, are not the other states, by definition, "trapping" poor kids in failing schools who otherwise might get a better education? I'm willing to let the "unlucky" kids fail if you will let the ones who MIGHT get luckier do so. Go ahead, "skim the cream." At least we'll have cream.

John said...

The problem is that we have been skimming the cream for decades, in multiple ways. Then folks like you complain that the schools are failing to succeed with what is remaining and that they are too expensive.

When we create another tool to allow more cream students to escape their non-cream peers, will you double down on your insults regarding the failure of the Inner City Public school systems?

In MN we have Charters and Home Schooling. Not sure how anyone would know if the home schoolers were working together. The ones I knew did a lot with other similar families.

jerrye92002 said...

I guess I'm trying to understand what you have against students getting a good education. If they are the "cream" and can benefit from something other than the failing public school they are in, why on earth would you condemn them to stay there, even if the "non-cream" don't get to escape with them? Isn't the solution is to let everyone escape, if possible, or else turn the school into some place where the non-cream can get a better education?

I will say it one more time: I am not insulting the inner city school systems, I am merely observing the real results of whatever it is they are doing, or not doing. I observe that kids who "escape" those schools by one means or another tend to do better academically and wonder how we can continue to condemn others to such sub-standard education.

Yes, I know that home-schoolers get together for social events, field trips, etc. But what Georgia has done is a step beyond that, where multiple families are home-schooled in one home-- in essence a private neighborhood school. That lets a couple of parents go to work and pay the third to do the teaching. The kids do (much) better and all the parents have jobs. What's wrong with that?

John said...

Now I am fine with what they are doing in Georgia.

However I do not think you are willing to deal the real cause of the achievement gap. You can ignore the unlucky kids and poor / unqualified / incapable parents all you want, but they are not going anywhere...

jerrye92002 said...

Precisely the problem. Are the kids unlucky because the parents were? If so, why did those parents not get the free public education that lifted them out of poverty, and why do we not allow the kids to escape that same fate? If they "are not going anywhere" is it because you have them "locked in" to failing schools that we KNOW are failing and yet continue to support, while we continually fight against all alternatives?

John said...

The unlucky kids are not escaping their Parents fate because folks like yourself do not want to hold Parents accountable.

Remember when I have proposed letting Teachers grade Parents on the simplest of Parental duties... (ie at school on time, dressed, clean, fed, homework complete, collaborates with Teacher(s), child behaves in school, etc) You nearly blew a gasket...

As long as negligent / unqualified / incapable parents are allowed to have and raise as many kids as they want... We will have unlucky failing kids.

jerrye92002 said...

Well, we are going to continue to go around on this. You continue to lump the kids who COULD do better in a non-failing school in with the unlucky kids who, either because of incapable or disheartened parents, you condemn to the failing school. THEN, you decide that those unlucky kids are never going to get a good education, without ever giving them a choice otherwise, and letting the school evade all responsibility. Once again, I refuse to condemn parents for making bad choices until they actually HAVE [realistic] choices, and I will continue to condemn school [systems] for failing to do better than the "competition."

By law, parents must send the kids to school, and may not neglect their proper care. Those that do not are already "graded" by the justice system and Child Protective Services. But when the almighty State cannot even guarantee their physical safety to, from and in school, let alone an education up to the basic State standards, who is being "incapable" here? How can all 36,000 MPS students be "unlucky"?