Poll: Does anyone really take Trump's "presidental run" seriously?

[SomethingUnrelated]

Well, Reagan did it, so I don't see why Trump can't give it a try.

 

[dslatch]

It's just a big publicity stunt, or if he is serious he's just trying to copy everyone's favorite California governor.

 

[lacktheknack]

and Palin's such a backwards idiot that the two will just spend hours slapping each other with fish until the whole Republican party smells like rotten cod.

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I'd vote for it.

Except I can't, because I'm Canadian. Because I'm Canadian, I don't follow US politics, and reading the title of this thread was probably one of the most surreal things I've read... ever.

 

[larysalove]

Say it with me kids, publicity. Like he has any idea how to run a county. I mean seriously. If he is elected, I'm moving.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

All other areas that people pay taxes to the government are things that are needed daily or things that are their for our protection: Police, firefighting, schools, the military, and road works.

The military is not needed for the daily protection of the people. At least not the Federal military. In fact, only the National Guard is able to deploy on combat and police operations on US soil without a declaration of war.

The problem with what you said is that I didn't say that military is needed for daily protection. It isn't hard to see that in between the words daily and protection in my comment above is the conjunction "or". Leading afterward is the list, with "or" I am saying that the things in the list are either needed daily or for our protection, I didn't say that things in the list were both. If I had used the conjunction "and" then you would have been well with in your thoughts to point out that military protection isn't needed daily, but that is not the case. I left it to the reader to easily qualify "the military" under "for our protection" and not "needed daily".

The point is that people are paying for just themselves and possibly for their families. With government healthcare, people know that part of the taxes they pay will go to other people, people they don't know and frankly don't care about. Such increase in taxes for such a thing is taking money from people that would rather see it go to use for themselves or their families. That extra money is possibly money that was going to go into an account to be saved for emergencies.

People are already spending money on healthcare. It is not as though there would be a new expense here. The question you ought to be asking is simply if there is a better way. I'm not saying any option thus far presented is better, but I've seen fair evidence that suggests our current course is both more expensive per capita than any other nation and is somehow less effective. That reason alone is why we ought to examine the issue.

Of course there would be a new expense. If I'm paying for my own private healthcare and then taxes go up because of the horribly gross cost to pay for the government healthcare, I end up paying extra money in taxes for other people's healthcare. That is a new expense.

I shouldn't have to pay extra tax money for the healthcare of other people, when I am not using the American taxpayers' money to pay for my healthcare. If I have to pay for the healthcare of some stranger, than that is forced charity. The only way I would allow for government healthcare to be, is if the only people that had to pay extra taxes for it are the people that are using it.

And yet you happily pay taxes that support other things including the education of people you don't know, (you're paying for my tuition just so you know thanks to my time in the Army), the construction of roads you will never use, the enforcement of laws you might not agree with, and charities beyond counting. Why is healthcare the one thing in this whole laundry list of things that, if you're anything like me, you spend roughly 1/3 of your paycheck on that you choose to draw the line at? Why not any of the other things that offer you no personal benefit?

This is just too easy:

On the education: It is fine that I have to pay for other people's education, because I in turn used their money to go to school when I was a kid and also took federal loans to go to college(which I will then pay off). I used the system and then I give back to the system.

Roads: Tons of road construction where I am at, loads of tax money being used on them(so much construction, that has been going on for three months now, that there is no way they haven't been using some federal money to fund it), and I will end up using those roads.

Law Enforcement: I haven't seen any unjust laws being enforced in my area. As long as the law doesn't infringe on constitutional rights and proper personal freedoms, then I am fine with it.

Charities: I'll get into that further down about welfare and other things.

The government asks people to pay into the charity but they don't half to. The people that do pay into the charity get special tax incentives. Example: If a person gives 100 dollars to the government healthcare charity, that person gets 120 dollars taken off their federal taxes when tax time comes around.

Your logic here doesn't work at ALL. If I give 100 bucks to the charity then I do not have to pay 120 dollars in taxes. The budget is not going to be reduced accordingly. All I have done is, in effect, transfer that tax burden to someone else. Not only that but I am essentially using it to print money. If I were an incredibly wealthy person, I could simply pay into this charity and receive what amounts to an enormous cut in taxes.

I see nothing wrong with that; it will also help not as well off families with a way to cut their tax burden. But one thing that the tax incentives won't do is allow people turn it around so that the government owes them money. So rich person can only pay into the health charity if they want, but the incentives will only be able to take their tax balance zero. Though if that doesn't work, the incentives will have a cap, like they only go up to thousand dollar tax write off, if the payer's taxes are more than a thousand dollars, if not then their write off cap is less.

Cutting taxes isn't such a bad idea, if it gets too bad, then it will force the government to look at the budget and take out the obviously unneeded pork barrel projects.

You wanted to know what Americans have against Socialist healthcare, that is my view on the situation as an American. Americans don't want to be forced to do things, especially if it means they lose the money they earn and nothing comes to them for forking that money over.

The problem with appending the word "socialist" to things is simply that it is a transparent attempt to vilify any project or institution without giving said project or institution a proper chance in the realm of public opinion. The nation is already host to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of programs that are easily socialist in nature. Where is the mass protest of public schooling? Where are the rallies calling for an end to social security and medicare? Why do we not march in the streets in protest of food stamps and welfare programs? Between these things we're looking at hundreds of billions of dollars spent each and every year and yet most of us receive no direct benefit from their existence.

Could it be that the indirect benefits are, in many cases, seen as an acceptable tradeoff, or has this just somehow slipped under the radar?

Public schooling: I don't protest because I used it and my future kids will use it.

Social Security: I didn't point it out but I'm not to keen on it. I have had an easy way to do away with it for awhile now. We set a cut off date with allotted funding for a certain age group and up.

This plan will obviously not allow for the government healthcare charity I talk about but with the extra money people will be seeing there isn't a problem:

When the social security cut off is made, we also implement the Fair Tax. This effectively will do away with the IRS, because all taxes will be collected though higher sales taxes on nonessential goods. The sales tax would go up to 20 to 25%. Things like food and other necessities won't be taxed.

With this plan, no money will be taken out of people's pay checks, people will see their whole paycheck. The people will be the ones that determine what the government gets in tax money by way of what they spend their extra money on, on things like, video games, televisions, movies, toys, cars, etc, etc. This will be a proper kind of forcing, the only thing like it that needs to be done. It will force people to be responsible for their own lives. They have to create budgets to pay for the necessities and see if they have money leftover that they can use on wants. People will have to make their own choices about what they save for retirement.

Welfare and such: Don't agree with it, it definitely isn't run properly. On the such part, a friend of mine's uncle got laid off and his unemployment was paying him more than he got each time with his paycheck, that shouldn't happen. I might talk more about this later.

 

[sylekage]

I'm gonna say "No"

But if he actually does, I think he's gonna fall out early cuz he'll fire everyone beneath him.

Just because it's reality, doesn't make it reality T.V.!

 

[Xojins]

He's a rich guy. That's all he is. If he becomes president I might just move out of the country, because he'll probably fuck us up worse than George W. Bush did.

 

[staika]

Lots of republican hate going around in this thread so being a Republican myself I feel like I'm going to be verbally assassinated but whatever.

OT: I think he's taking it seriously, I don't know about the rest of the Republican big wigs but I think he wants to run because who doesn't want to be the leader of their respective country. Now I think him actually running for president would hurt the republican party more than it help. Also if this would happen I would be very depressed because that guarantees Obama's victory almost like what happened the last election when McCain chose Palin to be his vice-president and I had to facepalm at that point because that was a fucking stupid move on his part and I think the election would've been much closer if Palin wasn't the vice-president candidate.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Have you ever heard of the term "More money than sense."? Were one to look this up, they'd find Donald Trump's picture right next to it. The man's been quoted for saying that if it wasn't for the US, the Middle East wouldn't have existed. Yeah, I guess they're doing us a HUGE favor, now aren't they?

So, no. I don't take his Presidential run seriously at all, because whatever this man says shows how completely out of touch the man is. But if there's one thing I take him seriously as, it's as the closest thing that US politics has to Charlie Sheen.

 

[Altorin]

is he actually going to run? probably. He's not really pulling a Stephen Colbert.

Will he win? lol, probably not. But I imagine democrats were saying similar things about Ronald Reagan that they're saying about Trump now.

Now, comparing Trump to Reagan isn't fair to Reagan, but I don't imagine Trump will win.

 

[TheCodeNinja]

Errr. Wrong. A lot of American companies value American workers, it's just that they can't really afford to be here because of high taxes. If we tax imports heavily, then that could just make the economy worse than it already is. We need to attract business, not force them to stay here. The corporate tax rate is what, above %40 now?

General Electric (the American/worldwide corporation) made $14.2 billion in profit last year with $5 billion of that coming out of the United States. They got a tax rebate of $3.2 billion from the US. This means that for worldwide/US profits, they had effective tax rate of -22%/-64%.

Oil companies did the exact same thing in the last year. How can asking them to pay less taxes help? They already don't pay any.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

It's pretty hard to imagine the country electing someone that could beat Obama's status as the worst president in US history.

I expect you've never heard of James Buchanan, then? Andrew Johnson? Warren G. Harding?

As I said in another post, I didn't say that he was tied up their in the first place position, but Obama is definitely in that position.

 

[Woodsey]

Does anyone take the Republicans seriously?

[sub]Zing![/sub]

I just can't envision 'President Trump'. Too many jokes, for one. Not enough charisma for another.

We could have had a Prime Minister Balls. Oh the things I'd have given...

*sigh*

 

[dogenzakaminion]

For one, preliminary poling showing Trump leading is not representative of the final outcome at all, and his support has dropped significantly since the birth certificate fiasco. I think he knows this and that he's now using the press to score points for his show. I do not think he is going to run for real and if he does he will loose to politically stronger candidates.

That being said, I hope he runs. It would just be too damn funny.

 

[BanthaFodder]

heh, no.

I think he's gonna pull a Palin; decide to have nothing to do with politics, but continue to jeer from the sidelines.

 

[The_Yeti]

Lets face it, Trumps crazy, but hes rich and crazy, he could win, pull us out of debt miraculously, and we'll all have trump tattoos, or he'll fail miserably, either way is funny.

 

[McNinja]

I don't follow American politics, however, I would say that Trump would be a very... Conservative president. It would definitely be a step back.

"a" step back? try 30 steps back. His only thing is that he hasn't seen Obama's birth certificate, which is pretty much stupid by now. Seriously, that whole thing should've been dropped after the first year was up.