Posted by gomiami1972 on 2/26/2019 3:56:00 PM (view original):
What program are you guys using? Some of the sentences are pretty funny.
Who made the Green New Deal suggestion? I think that would be an entertaining discussion...assuming someone would defend it.
I'm down to talk about the green new deal but arguing is tough, because it's really just a concept. There isn't any actual policy to criticize or defend, it's just a group of principles.
For instance, AOC proposed 100% renewable electricity and decarbonizing the entire economy within 10 years. Well, that's not possible.
But a combination of renewable and carbon free energy (nuclear etc) might work.
The "new deal" part is just an infrastructure bill attached to a clean energy bill. It's not a bad idea. But it's also not a new idea and if half the country is still convinced that carbon emissions aren't even a problem, getting it passed prior to or absent a 2020 Dem sweep will be impossible.
This was an interesting quote from Vox on it:
The first and most persistent question facing any social reform in the US is how it will pay for itself. The right has spent more than half a century in the US waging a propaganda campaign intended to convince Americans of a few key things: 1) the federal budget must be balanced, with every dollar spent “paid for” with a dollar of revenue raised, lest inflation destroy us all; 2) taxes are high and burdensome and any effort to raise taxes is, de facto, bad; 3) government is incompetent and its spending is always wasteful; and 4) America is broke, in debt, with crippling liabilities coming due soon.
To be clear, all four are false. They are pernicious myths, motivated by the desire to prevent progressive social reform. They are, to use a technical term, bullshit.
But they are, nonetheless, widely accepted bullshit that shapes the US political economy. Indeed, they have been repeated so often, for so long, that they have permeated the establishments of both parties and shaped the folk political theories of the average American. Stop a random person on the street and they might not know much about politics, but they will be certain that the country is in debt and can’t afford nice things.