Matthew

Perhaps. That was also true back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when taxes were far higher. Those decades had a transformative impact on investing in our society and making it better. The same cannot be said of the last 40 years of right wing austerity politics.

These kinds of comparisons are always flawed. Can't blame trump for necessary drastic spending that took take place in a global pandemic. And the lack of adequate revenue is still a chronic problem that obviously Republicans don't have the will to fix, nor democrats the ability to fix in a divided government.

Fighting against someone's "influence in our politics" is not a call to violence.

Lobbying in general is unethical. 95% of current lobbying represents corporations. Citizen/societal interest is barely considered. So if we are going to have lobbying, ANY stakeholder that isn't the prevailing corporate perspective is useful.

I think we'll be seeing more of this. It's conceivable that the republican party could be ideologically on track to become a de facto socialist party. They've already mobilized large swathes of the working class, while also alienating large swathes of the educated and professional class. The longer that working class populism survives, the higher odds that the messaging will gravitate more solidly against the country's economic elites. Railing against working class immigrate migrant farm workers as their main fear tactic will only work for so long.

Draft aside, imagine if all able bodied 18 year olds had minimum 2 years of mandatory national gaurd duty. A lot of men and women would personally benefit from this in terms of down to earth competencies.

This guy had interesting opinion piece in the nyt today on this topic.

I'm a teacher, leftist, and atheist and I don't find this significant or noteworthy. If the government were to put a sign up in my room with religious stuff from the bronze age, I don't see any good or any harm that would come from it. I live in a red state where republican lawmakers tend to do a lot of pointless stuff like this that uses the coercive power of the government purely for virtue-signaling performance, with seldom any long term policy interest in improving society in any way.

In every state, Democrat or Republican, the minimum age to enter a strip club is at least 18. If this is in Florida and you wish to make it partisan, then you should question why the republican government of Florida is failing to enforce the law.

Is there an actual issue still being discussed in this thread?

I think when people say this, they are referring to short term measurable factors like unemployment (currently 4%), the stock market (S&P 500 earnings at all time high), inflation (currently 3.27%), and generally whether there is a recession or fear of one on the horizon (neither at the moment). But in terms of longer-term systemic traits like poverty (around 40 million americans for decades), housing shortage (short by 6 million homes), health care costs (premiums avg about $450/mo for a 30 year old), etc I suspect people who currently profit from the system largely work to prevent these kinds of things from being fixed, which they otherwise could be.