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SHP_cmv_train

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[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "> I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. How do you propose that this is done? You should note that billionaires do not earn billions, they own things that are worth billions.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "one dude voluntarily pissing away his money to stroke his ego is completely different than the gov't taking away money by force from all people who are \"rich\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "No one espouses \"trickle down\", the term was coined as a dig at Hoover's engineering degree. The joke being that he knows that water trickles down but he doesn't realize that money trickles up. The whole thing has been a dig for a century and doesn't really have theoretical defense since it is a straw man position designed and intended to be easily attacked. The big issues with taxes is that very often they do things that they aren't intended to do. Corporate taxes are a poster child for tax incidence. What is tax incidence? Well, it's who *really* ends up paying the tax. But, I hear you say, corporations pay the tax, they send in the check. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who mails in the check it only matters who is out money. In the case of corporate taxes it is the consumer who is made to take the first bite of the shit sandwich. Companies who can get away with raising prices to account for the higher tax do so, yeah the company writes the check but it is the guy buying the stuff who is paying. If they can only raise prices so much or they are selling luxury goods and walk away if the price rises at all they turn around and make employees eat it. Sometimes it's obvious, like pay cuts or layoff, but it's usually something far more subtle like shifting to less expensive benefits or not hiring replacements when someone retires or quits. While companies usually have the power in these situations they don't have all the power, particularly when workers are highly skilled, hard to replace, or well organized. Then, and only then, do the shareholders have to eat what remains. Fifty years ago it was the Bloombergs of the world, but now an increasing proportion of that is workers again since the shift from pensions to 401(K) and other defined contribution schemes workers own ever larger proportions of publicly traded companies, which means that they're getting hosed twice. That \"getting hosed twice\" issue is why Capital Gains Taxes are a thing. Capital Gains are Income. I would like to see them taxed as Income. But, as long as Corporate taxes are a thing you have the money being taxed as profit for the company and then immediately taxed a second time as income for the shareholder. They argued that this was unfair, and set up a lower rate for capital gains. I would love to see Corporate Taxes done away with altogether and Capital Gains taxes as income. Not only would that only hit the Bloombergs (and also people with non-tax advantaged retirement savings), but corporate taxes are riddled with loopholes and accounting conventions and all sorts of ways to cheat that simply don't exist in income taxes. You'd be taxing the same money at a higher rate with fewer loopholes. I see that as an unqualified win in the way that adding entirely new taxes wouldn't necessarily be. I would love to see things streamlined. A VAT with the express purpose of raising money. VATs have a history of working well as designed and not changing behavior much. Luxury taxes or a tax intended to punish the rich for buying expensive toys or to keep people from buying things damaging to their health, never raise nearly enough money. The rich simply go and buy from overseas, which utterly destroyed the American yacht industry in the early 1990's. Ironically, it was Bush Senior who pushed for and passed it, but it is an object lesson that it would be good of us to not forget. The poor will simply turn to tax evasion to get their tax-stickerless cigarettes, which only feeds organized crime and cut into the revenue such schemes always claim but never deliver on. An additional Land Value Tax, something that taxes the land a house is built on but not the house itself, would go a long way to taxing the rich. Let's face it, rural land isn't worth much. Individual lots in suburban neighborhoods only have value if they're hooked up to municipal water and power. It's the people who have large holdings of urban land or massive estates that would end up paying most of this. That's a fair proxy for wealthy people, and would miss the poor completely. Because it's not a traditional property tax (which taxes the value of the house as well and the land) it would have a much smaller impact on farmers and retirees who own their own homes. Wealth taxes, where you just take X% of the money of rich people, would never generate long term wealth the same way as making them recognize all income as income and taxing the land they aren't using effectively. If you look at European examples of \"let's just tax rich people\" or \"let's just tax the stock market\" you see a long history of failure. Those are very poorly defined ideas that are basically impossible to implement in a functional way. If you want to improve social programs there's a simple way to do it. De-silo them. Instead of giving people tokens that can only be used on food and vouchers that can only be used on rent and a charge account that can only be used on health care, just give them straight cash. People are, generally speaking, smart. Given the information and raw cash they can more accurately allocate the aid given to them to match their needs than Congressmen who have never been poor, or are trying to give them what a hypothetical average person might need instead of what they need. You need far less fraud investigations, oversight, and bureaucracy this way. Because you don't care if this dollar is going to food or housing you don't need to arbitrarily enforce rules about what they \"should\" be spending money on. The needless pearl-clutching about how people on public assistance spend their money only bogs down everything and siphons billions of dollars already earmarked to addressing these issues into needless tail chasing. To be sure, we do need *some* enforcement and having good quality workers running a good quality infrastructure to ensure that no one is slipping through cracks or gaming the system unjustly, but we can cut the bullshit about people pouring out bottled water to convert food stamps into rent money at a rate of five cents on the dollar. Moreover, I *like* the idea that there is an alternative to the government when it comes to doing big projects. I don't like that it's a handful of rich folk who can do things or not on a whim, but I hate the idea that there would be only one possible way to address climate change or the risks posed by polio or whatever. Whenever there is only one individual or group who has complete control over something then they have outsized power. I don't like the idea of giving the government unlimited power over anything that costs more than a couple of middle class family pooling their rainy day funds could manage. Ideally we would have a bunch of nonprofits and community groups that exist for pooling large sums of wealth to do amazing thing to better reality for everyone. Rich folks are already an alternative already in place, largely by tradition and accident, so I don't want to destroy them and default to giving politicians complete and unquestioned dominion over everything yet, I want to see more pools of wealth that are more responsive to the needs and desires of people generally. It's a shame that the corporate structure has collapsed onto just the one default form. Having more employee owned (like Publix Supermarkets), customer owned (like REI), depositor owned (like credit unions), or dedicated to a purpose corporation would be wonderful. Those old-school subscription clubs where everyone would chip in a dollar to make community improvements and invest in everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the USS Texas (a battleship) would be things that I would love to make a comeback. After all, if there were non-government solutions to problems that require a big ass pile of money then I would be much more eager to \"eat the rich\" as some others have posited.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "one dude voluntarily pissing away his money to stroke his ego is completely different than the gov't taking away money by force from all people who are \"rich\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "No one espouses \"trickle down\", the term was coined as a dig at Hoover's engineering degree. The joke being that he knows that water trickles down but he doesn't realize that money trickles up. The whole thing has been a dig for a century and doesn't really have theoretical defense since it is a straw man position designed and intended to be easily attacked. The big issues with taxes is that very often they do things that they aren't intended to do. Corporate taxes are a poster child for tax incidence. What is tax incidence? Well, it's who *really* ends up paying the tax. But, I hear you say, corporations pay the tax, they send in the check. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who mails in the check it only matters who is out money. In the case of corporate taxes it is the consumer who is made to take the first bite of the shit sandwich. Companies who can get away with raising prices to account for the higher tax do so, yeah the company writes the check but it is the guy buying the stuff who is paying. If they can only raise prices so much or they are selling luxury goods and walk away if the price rises at all they turn around and make employees eat it. Sometimes it's obvious, like pay cuts or layoff, but it's usually something far more subtle like shifting to less expensive benefits or not hiring replacements when someone retires or quits. While companies usually have the power in these situations they don't have all the power, particularly when workers are highly skilled, hard to replace, or well organized. Then, and only then, do the shareholders have to eat what remains. Fifty years ago it was the Bloombergs of the world, but now an increasing proportion of that is workers again since the shift from pensions to 401(K) and other defined contribution schemes workers own ever larger proportions of publicly traded companies, which means that they're getting hosed twice. That \"getting hosed twice\" issue is why Capital Gains Taxes are a thing. Capital Gains are Income. I would like to see them taxed as Income. But, as long as Corporate taxes are a thing you have the money being taxed as profit for the company and then immediately taxed a second time as income for the shareholder. They argued that this was unfair, and set up a lower rate for capital gains. I would love to see Corporate Taxes done away with altogether and Capital Gains taxes as income. Not only would that only hit the Bloombergs (and also people with non-tax advantaged retirement savings), but corporate taxes are riddled with loopholes and accounting conventions and all sorts of ways to cheat that simply don't exist in income taxes. You'd be taxing the same money at a higher rate with fewer loopholes. I see that as an unqualified win in the way that adding entirely new taxes wouldn't necessarily be. I would love to see things streamlined. A VAT with the express purpose of raising money. VATs have a history of working well as designed and not changing behavior much. Luxury taxes or a tax intended to punish the rich for buying expensive toys or to keep people from buying things damaging to their health, never raise nearly enough money. The rich simply go and buy from overseas, which utterly destroyed the American yacht industry in the early 1990's. Ironically, it was Bush Senior who pushed for and passed it, but it is an object lesson that it would be good of us to not forget. The poor will simply turn to tax evasion to get their tax-stickerless cigarettes, which only feeds organized crime and cut into the revenue such schemes always claim but never deliver on. An additional Land Value Tax, something that taxes the land a house is built on but not the house itself, would go a long way to taxing the rich. Let's face it, rural land isn't worth much. Individual lots in suburban neighborhoods only have value if they're hooked up to municipal water and power. It's the people who have large holdings of urban land or massive estates that would end up paying most of this. That's a fair proxy for wealthy people, and would miss the poor completely. Because it's not a traditional property tax (which taxes the value of the house as well and the land) it would have a much smaller impact on farmers and retirees who own their own homes. Wealth taxes, where you just take X% of the money of rich people, would never generate long term wealth the same way as making them recognize all income as income and taxing the land they aren't using effectively. If you look at European examples of \"let's just tax rich people\" or \"let's just tax the stock market\" you see a long history of failure. Those are very poorly defined ideas that are basically impossible to implement in a functional way. If you want to improve social programs there's a simple way to do it. De-silo them. Instead of giving people tokens that can only be used on food and vouchers that can only be used on rent and a charge account that can only be used on health care, just give them straight cash. People are, generally speaking, smart. Given the information and raw cash they can more accurately allocate the aid given to them to match their needs than Congressmen who have never been poor, or are trying to give them what a hypothetical average person might need instead of what they need. You need far less fraud investigations, oversight, and bureaucracy this way. Because you don't care if this dollar is going to food or housing you don't need to arbitrarily enforce rules about what they \"should\" be spending money on. The needless pearl-clutching about how people on public assistance spend their money only bogs down everything and siphons billions of dollars already earmarked to addressing these issues into needless tail chasing. To be sure, we do need *some* enforcement and having good quality workers running a good quality infrastructure to ensure that no one is slipping through cracks or gaming the system unjustly, but we can cut the bullshit about people pouring out bottled water to convert food stamps into rent money at a rate of five cents on the dollar. Moreover, I *like* the idea that there is an alternative to the government when it comes to doing big projects. I don't like that it's a handful of rich folk who can do things or not on a whim, but I hate the idea that there would be only one possible way to address climate change or the risks posed by polio or whatever. Whenever there is only one individual or group who has complete control over something then they have outsized power. I don't like the idea of giving the government unlimited power over anything that costs more than a couple of middle class family pooling their rainy day funds could manage. Ideally we would have a bunch of nonprofits and community groups that exist for pooling large sums of wealth to do amazing thing to better reality for everyone. Rich folks are already an alternative already in place, largely by tradition and accident, so I don't want to destroy them and default to giving politicians complete and unquestioned dominion over everything yet, I want to see more pools of wealth that are more responsive to the needs and desires of people generally. It's a shame that the corporate structure has collapsed onto just the one default form. Having more employee owned (like Publix Supermarkets), customer owned (like REI), depositor owned (like credit unions), or dedicated to a purpose corporation would be wonderful. Those old-school subscription clubs where everyone would chip in a dollar to make community improvements and invest in everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the USS Texas (a battleship) would be things that I would love to make a comeback. After all, if there were non-government solutions to problems that require a big ass pile of money then I would be much more eager to \"eat the rich\" as some others have posited.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "He's the 9th richest man on the planet. That's such an incredible outlier. He doesn't represent any particular group, very well, certainly not enough to extrapolate \"because of Bloomberg, then wealthy people could pay more in taxes\". Even those comfortably in the 1%, or even 0.01%, or even 0.00001%, could not have spent what Bloomberg spent. While I fully agree with tax reform, particularly on capital gains (I think income should be income, keep it simple), extrapolating anything from major outliers, is a large mistake. Secondarily, he was paying about 50% more to his campaign staff, and injected that $500M into the US economy. Economically, I'm always happier seeing someone spend their wealth, than funneling it through the government. Bloomberg bought exactly 0 bombs. He killed exactly 0 civilians on foreign soil. He paid well above standard wages for similar work in other campaigns, and he made it rain. Think about that for a second, if you give $1 extra to the government, some fraction of that dollar is buying the next Predator drone that will unleash a Salvo on some Yemeni farmer, and kill he and his family. No thanks.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "No one espouses \"trickle down\", the term was coined as a dig at Hoover's engineering degree. The joke being that he knows that water trickles down but he doesn't realize that money trickles up. The whole thing has been a dig for a century and doesn't really have theoretical defense since it is a straw man position designed and intended to be easily attacked. The big issues with taxes is that very often they do things that they aren't intended to do. Corporate taxes are a poster child for tax incidence. What is tax incidence? Well, it's who *really* ends up paying the tax. But, I hear you say, corporations pay the tax, they send in the check. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who mails in the check it only matters who is out money. In the case of corporate taxes it is the consumer who is made to take the first bite of the shit sandwich. Companies who can get away with raising prices to account for the higher tax do so, yeah the company writes the check but it is the guy buying the stuff who is paying. If they can only raise prices so much or they are selling luxury goods and walk away if the price rises at all they turn around and make employees eat it. Sometimes it's obvious, like pay cuts or layoff, but it's usually something far more subtle like shifting to less expensive benefits or not hiring replacements when someone retires or quits. While companies usually have the power in these situations they don't have all the power, particularly when workers are highly skilled, hard to replace, or well organized. Then, and only then, do the shareholders have to eat what remains. Fifty years ago it was the Bloombergs of the world, but now an increasing proportion of that is workers again since the shift from pensions to 401(K) and other defined contribution schemes workers own ever larger proportions of publicly traded companies, which means that they're getting hosed twice. That \"getting hosed twice\" issue is why Capital Gains Taxes are a thing. Capital Gains are Income. I would like to see them taxed as Income. But, as long as Corporate taxes are a thing you have the money being taxed as profit for the company and then immediately taxed a second time as income for the shareholder. They argued that this was unfair, and set up a lower rate for capital gains. I would love to see Corporate Taxes done away with altogether and Capital Gains taxes as income. Not only would that only hit the Bloombergs (and also people with non-tax advantaged retirement savings), but corporate taxes are riddled with loopholes and accounting conventions and all sorts of ways to cheat that simply don't exist in income taxes. You'd be taxing the same money at a higher rate with fewer loopholes. I see that as an unqualified win in the way that adding entirely new taxes wouldn't necessarily be. I would love to see things streamlined. A VAT with the express purpose of raising money. VATs have a history of working well as designed and not changing behavior much. Luxury taxes or a tax intended to punish the rich for buying expensive toys or to keep people from buying things damaging to their health, never raise nearly enough money. The rich simply go and buy from overseas, which utterly destroyed the American yacht industry in the early 1990's. Ironically, it was Bush Senior who pushed for and passed it, but it is an object lesson that it would be good of us to not forget. The poor will simply turn to tax evasion to get their tax-stickerless cigarettes, which only feeds organized crime and cut into the revenue such schemes always claim but never deliver on. An additional Land Value Tax, something that taxes the land a house is built on but not the house itself, would go a long way to taxing the rich. Let's face it, rural land isn't worth much. Individual lots in suburban neighborhoods only have value if they're hooked up to municipal water and power. It's the people who have large holdings of urban land or massive estates that would end up paying most of this. That's a fair proxy for wealthy people, and would miss the poor completely. Because it's not a traditional property tax (which taxes the value of the house as well and the land) it would have a much smaller impact on farmers and retirees who own their own homes. Wealth taxes, where you just take X% of the money of rich people, would never generate long term wealth the same way as making them recognize all income as income and taxing the land they aren't using effectively. If you look at European examples of \"let's just tax rich people\" or \"let's just tax the stock market\" you see a long history of failure. Those are very poorly defined ideas that are basically impossible to implement in a functional way. If you want to improve social programs there's a simple way to do it. De-silo them. Instead of giving people tokens that can only be used on food and vouchers that can only be used on rent and a charge account that can only be used on health care, just give them straight cash. People are, generally speaking, smart. Given the information and raw cash they can more accurately allocate the aid given to them to match their needs than Congressmen who have never been poor, or are trying to give them what a hypothetical average person might need instead of what they need. You need far less fraud investigations, oversight, and bureaucracy this way. Because you don't care if this dollar is going to food or housing you don't need to arbitrarily enforce rules about what they \"should\" be spending money on. The needless pearl-clutching about how people on public assistance spend their money only bogs down everything and siphons billions of dollars already earmarked to addressing these issues into needless tail chasing. To be sure, we do need *some* enforcement and having good quality workers running a good quality infrastructure to ensure that no one is slipping through cracks or gaming the system unjustly, but we can cut the bullshit about people pouring out bottled water to convert food stamps into rent money at a rate of five cents on the dollar. Moreover, I *like* the idea that there is an alternative to the government when it comes to doing big projects. I don't like that it's a handful of rich folk who can do things or not on a whim, but I hate the idea that there would be only one possible way to address climate change or the risks posed by polio or whatever. Whenever there is only one individual or group who has complete control over something then they have outsized power. I don't like the idea of giving the government unlimited power over anything that costs more than a couple of middle class family pooling their rainy day funds could manage. Ideally we would have a bunch of nonprofits and community groups that exist for pooling large sums of wealth to do amazing thing to better reality for everyone. Rich folks are already an alternative already in place, largely by tradition and accident, so I don't want to destroy them and default to giving politicians complete and unquestioned dominion over everything yet, I want to see more pools of wealth that are more responsive to the needs and desires of people generally. It's a shame that the corporate structure has collapsed onto just the one default form. Having more employee owned (like Publix Supermarkets), customer owned (like REI), depositor owned (like credit unions), or dedicated to a purpose corporation would be wonderful. Those old-school subscription clubs where everyone would chip in a dollar to make community improvements and invest in everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the USS Texas (a battleship) would be things that I would love to make a comeback. After all, if there were non-government solutions to problems that require a big ass pile of money then I would be much more eager to \"eat the rich\" as some others have posited.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Mike Bloomberg is exceptional even among billionaires. He is the 9th richest person in the world, and the 6th richest in the United States. The 18th-richest American has less than half of his wealth, the 37th-richest American has about 1/5th of his wealth, and almost everyone below that is a single-digit billionaire. Your argument that Bloomberg's \"effortless spending\" on the campaign means that all billionaires should have much higher taxes is suspect, because the vast, vast majority of the 607 U.S. billionaires have nowhere near his level of wealth. I don't mean to use these numbers to argue that taxation of the ultra-wealthy is unfair or bad policy, but rather to show that arguments for higher taxes on high-net-worth individuals should not be based on the behavior of Mike Bloomberg or any other ultra-ultra-wealthy person. All data comes from Forbes's Billionaires 2020 list (which is either super interesting or super depressing, depending on your perspective).", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "No one espouses \"trickle down\", the term was coined as a dig at Hoover's engineering degree. The joke being that he knows that water trickles down but he doesn't realize that money trickles up. The whole thing has been a dig for a century and doesn't really have theoretical defense since it is a straw man position designed and intended to be easily attacked. The big issues with taxes is that very often they do things that they aren't intended to do. Corporate taxes are a poster child for tax incidence. What is tax incidence? Well, it's who *really* ends up paying the tax. But, I hear you say, corporations pay the tax, they send in the check. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who mails in the check it only matters who is out money. In the case of corporate taxes it is the consumer who is made to take the first bite of the shit sandwich. Companies who can get away with raising prices to account for the higher tax do so, yeah the company writes the check but it is the guy buying the stuff who is paying. If they can only raise prices so much or they are selling luxury goods and walk away if the price rises at all they turn around and make employees eat it. Sometimes it's obvious, like pay cuts or layoff, but it's usually something far more subtle like shifting to less expensive benefits or not hiring replacements when someone retires or quits. While companies usually have the power in these situations they don't have all the power, particularly when workers are highly skilled, hard to replace, or well organized. Then, and only then, do the shareholders have to eat what remains. Fifty years ago it was the Bloombergs of the world, but now an increasing proportion of that is workers again since the shift from pensions to 401(K) and other defined contribution schemes workers own ever larger proportions of publicly traded companies, which means that they're getting hosed twice. That \"getting hosed twice\" issue is why Capital Gains Taxes are a thing. Capital Gains are Income. I would like to see them taxed as Income. But, as long as Corporate taxes are a thing you have the money being taxed as profit for the company and then immediately taxed a second time as income for the shareholder. They argued that this was unfair, and set up a lower rate for capital gains. I would love to see Corporate Taxes done away with altogether and Capital Gains taxes as income. Not only would that only hit the Bloombergs (and also people with non-tax advantaged retirement savings), but corporate taxes are riddled with loopholes and accounting conventions and all sorts of ways to cheat that simply don't exist in income taxes. You'd be taxing the same money at a higher rate with fewer loopholes. I see that as an unqualified win in the way that adding entirely new taxes wouldn't necessarily be. I would love to see things streamlined. A VAT with the express purpose of raising money. VATs have a history of working well as designed and not changing behavior much. Luxury taxes or a tax intended to punish the rich for buying expensive toys or to keep people from buying things damaging to their health, never raise nearly enough money. The rich simply go and buy from overseas, which utterly destroyed the American yacht industry in the early 1990's. Ironically, it was Bush Senior who pushed for and passed it, but it is an object lesson that it would be good of us to not forget. The poor will simply turn to tax evasion to get their tax-stickerless cigarettes, which only feeds organized crime and cut into the revenue such schemes always claim but never deliver on. An additional Land Value Tax, something that taxes the land a house is built on but not the house itself, would go a long way to taxing the rich. Let's face it, rural land isn't worth much. Individual lots in suburban neighborhoods only have value if they're hooked up to municipal water and power. It's the people who have large holdings of urban land or massive estates that would end up paying most of this. That's a fair proxy for wealthy people, and would miss the poor completely. Because it's not a traditional property tax (which taxes the value of the house as well and the land) it would have a much smaller impact on farmers and retirees who own their own homes. Wealth taxes, where you just take X% of the money of rich people, would never generate long term wealth the same way as making them recognize all income as income and taxing the land they aren't using effectively. If you look at European examples of \"let's just tax rich people\" or \"let's just tax the stock market\" you see a long history of failure. Those are very poorly defined ideas that are basically impossible to implement in a functional way. If you want to improve social programs there's a simple way to do it. De-silo them. Instead of giving people tokens that can only be used on food and vouchers that can only be used on rent and a charge account that can only be used on health care, just give them straight cash. People are, generally speaking, smart. Given the information and raw cash they can more accurately allocate the aid given to them to match their needs than Congressmen who have never been poor, or are trying to give them what a hypothetical average person might need instead of what they need. You need far less fraud investigations, oversight, and bureaucracy this way. Because you don't care if this dollar is going to food or housing you don't need to arbitrarily enforce rules about what they \"should\" be spending money on. The needless pearl-clutching about how people on public assistance spend their money only bogs down everything and siphons billions of dollars already earmarked to addressing these issues into needless tail chasing. To be sure, we do need *some* enforcement and having good quality workers running a good quality infrastructure to ensure that no one is slipping through cracks or gaming the system unjustly, but we can cut the bullshit about people pouring out bottled water to convert food stamps into rent money at a rate of five cents on the dollar. Moreover, I *like* the idea that there is an alternative to the government when it comes to doing big projects. I don't like that it's a handful of rich folk who can do things or not on a whim, but I hate the idea that there would be only one possible way to address climate change or the risks posed by polio or whatever. Whenever there is only one individual or group who has complete control over something then they have outsized power. I don't like the idea of giving the government unlimited power over anything that costs more than a couple of middle class family pooling their rainy day funds could manage. Ideally we would have a bunch of nonprofits and community groups that exist for pooling large sums of wealth to do amazing thing to better reality for everyone. Rich folks are already an alternative already in place, largely by tradition and accident, so I don't want to destroy them and default to giving politicians complete and unquestioned dominion over everything yet, I want to see more pools of wealth that are more responsive to the needs and desires of people generally. It's a shame that the corporate structure has collapsed onto just the one default form. Having more employee owned (like Publix Supermarkets), customer owned (like REI), depositor owned (like credit unions), or dedicated to a purpose corporation would be wonderful. Those old-school subscription clubs where everyone would chip in a dollar to make community improvements and invest in everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the USS Texas (a battleship) would be things that I would love to make a comeback. After all, if there were non-government solutions to problems that require a big ass pile of money then I would be much more eager to \"eat the rich\" as some others have posited.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bloomberg has donated 8.2 billion through the Giving Pledge. So his money likely has gone to help communities, where his money can be focused for good causes. What do you think the government would do by taking more of his money? Maybe buy a few more F35's? Maybe give Ukraine a little more money? The problem isn't taxation in the US. The problem is spending.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "He's the 9th richest man on the planet. That's such an incredible outlier. He doesn't represent any particular group, very well, certainly not enough to extrapolate \"because of Bloomberg, then wealthy people could pay more in taxes\". Even those comfortably in the 1%, or even 0.01%, or even 0.00001%, could not have spent what Bloomberg spent. While I fully agree with tax reform, particularly on capital gains (I think income should be income, keep it simple), extrapolating anything from major outliers, is a large mistake. Secondarily, he was paying about 50% more to his campaign staff, and injected that $500M into the US economy. Economically, I'm always happier seeing someone spend their wealth, than funneling it through the government. Bloomberg bought exactly 0 bombs. He killed exactly 0 civilians on foreign soil. He paid well above standard wages for similar work in other campaigns, and he made it rain. Think about that for a second, if you give $1 extra to the government, some fraction of that dollar is buying the next Predator drone that will unleash a Salvo on some Yemeni farmer, and kill he and his family. No thanks.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bloomberg has donated 8.2 billion through the Giving Pledge. So his money likely has gone to help communities, where his money can be focused for good causes. What do you think the government would do by taking more of his money? Maybe buy a few more F35's? Maybe give Ukraine a little more money? The problem isn't taxation in the US. The problem is spending.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Mike Bloomberg is exceptional even among billionaires. He is the 9th richest person in the world, and the 6th richest in the United States. The 18th-richest American has less than half of his wealth, the 37th-richest American has about 1/5th of his wealth, and almost everyone below that is a single-digit billionaire. Your argument that Bloomberg's \"effortless spending\" on the campaign means that all billionaires should have much higher taxes is suspect, because the vast, vast majority of the 607 U.S. billionaires have nowhere near his level of wealth. I don't mean to use these numbers to argue that taxation of the ultra-wealthy is unfair or bad policy, but rather to show that arguments for higher taxes on high-net-worth individuals should not be based on the behavior of Mike Bloomberg or any other ultra-ultra-wealthy person. All data comes from Forbes's Billionaires 2020 list (which is either super interesting or super depressing, depending on your perspective).", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bloomberg has donated 8.2 billion through the Giving Pledge. So his money likely has gone to help communities, where his money can be focused for good causes. What do you think the government would do by taking more of his money? Maybe buy a few more F35's? Maybe give Ukraine a little more money? The problem isn't taxation in the US. The problem is spending.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The Laffer Curve is a loose economic theory that describes the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. In short, both 0% and 100% tax rates would theoretically result in no tax revenue. At 0% you collect nothing, and at 100% there’d be nothing to collect since people would have no incentive to generate income if they can keep none of it. While this curve isn’t really something you can measure or predict, it does tell us two things: 1. Changing tax rates will affect the amount of taxable income. 2. At some point increasing the tax rate will actually cause a decrease in tax revenue. Mike Bloomberg decided to dump $500 million into the American economy to fund a short-lived presidential campaign. That decision led to an increase in tax revenue as most of that $500 million ended up paying the bills for the employees at any of the likely hundreds of marketing agencies, production companies, promotional material manufacturers, and Bloomberg campaign offices. People should be praising this type of spending. If it was the norm trickle-down economics might actually hold water. Now Mike Bloomberg could have also decided to say fuck it and move to Japan, taking all his wealth, spending power, and taxable assets with him. Anything could have prompted such a decision, like say an egregious tax hike on the fortune he earned for himself. In that case, an increase in tax rate would lead to an increase in tax revenue... for Japan! If you are going to tax the rich—*especially* if you are going to tax wealth—you better make sure the additional tax revenue you gain from the people who choose to keep their wealth in the country offsets the tax revenue you lose from the people who pull out. There’s a lot at stake when you’re talking about individuals who are paying hundreds of millions in taxes already. This is not to say that the tax rates should drop or even remain the same and no, the ultra wealthy would not experience truly ill effects from a tax increase. However, you can’t just say tax the ultra wealthy out of existence, because if you’re too aggressive the ultra wealthy would disappear before you could tax them, leading to *extremely* significant ill effects for the rest of us. Edit: for all of you calling me retard and bootlicker, let me be clear... Just because the Laffer curve is often erroneously used to argue for lower marginal tax rates does not mean we cannot learn something from it, and **we should raise marginal tax rates for higher income earners** because we are almost certainly tens of percentage points away from the “peak”. My point is that we can’t just blindly tax away in some quest to eliminate billionaires as quickly as possible. And for those who struggle with nuance I sincerely apologize.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Mike Bloomberg's campaign is proof that the ultra wealthy in the US can afford a higher tax rate with no ill effect on them Mike Bloomberg recently dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race after spending over $500 million dollars of his own money on his campaign. Even with this loss, he is still worth over $55 billion dollars. I believe that this effortless spending on Bloombergs part showcases the reality that is wealth inequality between the ultra rich and working class. While I do not believe the rich should give up their fortunes, I do believe that any arguments against taxing them more is simply propaganda from those who hold the wealth and higher power at this point. Certain media outlets claim that taxing the super wealthy is unfair and would be detrimental to those below them due to \"trickle down\" effects. There is also rhetoric that many self made billionaires worked hard for their fortunes, and that if we as Americans work hard, we might be rich ourselves one day. I believe that moving forward, we should push for much higher taxes on those earning/worth more than 1 billion USD. If the money Bloomberg spent on his campaign went to actual communities that need funding, actual change could have been possible. Social programs could benefit greatly from these funds, and maybe we could afford to better fund national programs such as healthcare or family leave.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bloomberg has donated 8.2 billion through the Giving Pledge. So his money likely has gone to help communities, where his money can be focused for good causes. What do you think the government would do by taking more of his money? Maybe buy a few more F35's? Maybe give Ukraine a little more money? The problem isn't taxation in the US. The problem is spending.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Some politicians receive support from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of individuals and organizations. Even if it's limited to major sponsors, there will still be thousands of them. There's just not enough room on the jumpsuit.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "From what I understand, the issue with FDOTUS is the Hatch Act. To prevent federal officials (not just politicians) from endorsing one product over another in their official capacity. That’s a big problem when you think about all of the federal officials you don’t see. These jumpsuits wouldn’t have any impact then. Imagine IRS agents endorsing a tax service over another. Or DoJ officials who endorse one defense attorney law firm over another. Or DMV agents endorsing a car manufacturer. The solution is not to make it transparent, but to make it illegal. We don’t want government officials to pick winners and losers based on bias.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This problem has been solved elsewhere. It's currently an American problem, reduce the amount you can spend on a campaign to a small amount. Put in requirements to account for every penny, cannot take donations over 1000 dollars from anyone or any company etc. All sponsors are available on line. If you win, or get a high percentage of the vote you get back a bunch of the money you put in. Worls well everywhere else.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "/u/laborfriendly (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/hsb854/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_politicians_should_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Okay first off: this is fucking hilarious. BUT: allegiances and having business with someone doesn't mean you support everything they do. Companies which donate to a political candidate may align with the candidate's views, but the opposite might not be true. I will use the show The good place to illustrate my point: in it, people get afterlife points depending on every single action during their time on Earth. However, it gets to a point where it is impossible for anyone to gain positive points because every action has ramifications that extend far beyond a person's ability to analyze it. Maybe you are buying a tomato, from a locally sourced vegetable shop, and then this seller turns out to be using some pesticide that has a ties with a human trafficking ring or something. It's a weird example, but I'm trying to explain that it's impossible for anyone to control the complete impact of every action, much less at the level of politician's campaigns, and any tie with anything shady, however loose, would be used to diminish them.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Individual contributions have a limit to donate to the politicians, that sweet SuperPAC money on the other hand is wide open. I support your idea, but the politician has to disclose their major donors from their PAC’s as well. Currently they don’t have to.... and that’s a bunch of BS. No point in pretending your funded “by the people” with small size font printed all over your suit, when you took millions from special interest and you don’t have to add that.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "so that the mods don't delete my, \"written up vote\", here is a perfunctory argument to change your view, not that i disagree, but that you haven't gone far enough w/ this brilliance. the jumpsuits should not stop at nascar style, they should add the full glitz of the vegas strip. each speech should be interrupted by youtube style ads from their sponsors. the \"white house\" should be auctioned off for naming rights. etc. etc. etc.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The issue here being the false assumption that they are taking the money to influence their actions in office. Sure, there's some individual cases of corruption, but for the overwhelming majority of campaign finance, the donations given are because a candidate already supports the position which a donor wants to financially back. Put another way, donors don't go \"candidate shopping\" based off which ones they can pay the most money to change their mind, that happens to be difficult and expensive. Much easier and cheaper to support someone *that already thinks the same way and has the same ideas as you do.*", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Politicians shouldn't be sponsored at all. They are representatives of the voters, not companies. Lobbying is anti-democratic, since not everyone is equal; those with more money have more power. While it doesn't stop backhand deals and preferential treatment, banning lobbying aligns the motives of politicians closer to their voters, and limits the overt corruption, which is an overwhelming net benefit. Corporate sponsorship of politicians is at its core, corruption. It is using money to influence policy, rather than grassroots support.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This problem has been solved elsewhere. It's currently an American problem, reduce the amount you can spend on a campaign to a small amount. Put in requirements to account for every penny, cannot take donations over 1000 dollars from anyone or any company etc. All sponsors are available on line. If you win, or get a high percentage of the vote you get back a bunch of the money you put in. Worls well everywhere else.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Okay first off: this is fucking hilarious. BUT: allegiances and having business with someone doesn't mean you support everything they do. Companies which donate to a political candidate may align with the candidate's views, but the opposite might not be true. I will use the show The good place to illustrate my point: in it, people get afterlife points depending on every single action during their time on Earth. However, it gets to a point where it is impossible for anyone to gain positive points because every action has ramifications that extend far beyond a person's ability to analyze it. Maybe you are buying a tomato, from a locally sourced vegetable shop, and then this seller turns out to be using some pesticide that has a ties with a human trafficking ring or something. It's a weird example, but I'm trying to explain that it's impossible for anyone to control the complete impact of every action, much less at the level of politician's campaigns, and any tie with anything shady, however loose, would be used to diminish them.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "/u/laborfriendly (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/hsb854/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_politicians_should_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Okay first off: this is fucking hilarious. BUT: allegiances and having business with someone doesn't mean you support everything they do. Companies which donate to a political candidate may align with the candidate's views, but the opposite might not be true. I will use the show The good place to illustrate my point: in it, people get afterlife points depending on every single action during their time on Earth. However, it gets to a point where it is impossible for anyone to gain positive points because every action has ramifications that extend far beyond a person's ability to analyze it. Maybe you are buying a tomato, from a locally sourced vegetable shop, and then this seller turns out to be using some pesticide that has a ties with a human trafficking ring or something. It's a weird example, but I'm trying to explain that it's impossible for anyone to control the complete impact of every action, much less at the level of politician's campaigns, and any tie with anything shady, however loose, would be used to diminish them.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "/u/laborfriendly (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/hsb854/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_politicians_should_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Individual contributions have a limit to donate to the politicians, that sweet SuperPAC money on the other hand is wide open. I support your idea, but the politician has to disclose their major donors from their PAC’s as well. Currently they don’t have to.... and that’s a bunch of BS. No point in pretending your funded “by the people” with small size font printed all over your suit, when you took millions from special interest and you don’t have to add that.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "/u/laborfriendly (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/hsb854/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_politicians_should_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "so that the mods don't delete my, \"written up vote\", here is a perfunctory argument to change your view, not that i disagree, but that you haven't gone far enough w/ this brilliance. the jumpsuits should not stop at nascar style, they should add the full glitz of the vegas strip. each speech should be interrupted by youtube style ads from their sponsors. the \"white house\" should be auctioned off for naming rights. etc. etc. etc.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "/u/laborfriendly (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/hsb854/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_politicians_should_be/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Politicians shouldn't be sponsored at all. They are representatives of the voters, not companies. Lobbying is anti-democratic, since not everyone is equal; those with more money have more power. While it doesn't stop backhand deals and preferential treatment, banning lobbying aligns the motives of politicians closer to their voters, and limits the overt corruption, which is an overwhelming net benefit. Corporate sponsorship of politicians is at its core, corruption. It is using money to influence policy, rather than grassroots support.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "At least give some credit to Robin Williams for coming up with this joke. Its the least you can do.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Individual contributions have a limit to donate to the politicians, that sweet SuperPAC money on the other hand is wide open. I support your idea, but the politician has to disclose their major donors from their PAC’s as well. Currently they don’t have to.... and that’s a bunch of BS. No point in pretending your funded “by the people” with small size font printed all over your suit, when you took millions from special interest and you don’t have to add that.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "At least give some credit to Robin Williams for coming up with this joke. Its the least you can do.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The logistics are impractical. Ok, make them wear those suits. * When? 24 hours a day, or just while they're working? Or just while they're campaigning? * Who? Do candidates need to wear this before they actually get elected in? When a local college professor runs for public office for the first time, does he need to wear the jumpsuit to class while he works his day job? * Whose names? What kinds of donations count? Formal campaign donations? What about volunteers? Favorable media reporting from journalists? Good PR from pre-political careers (e.g., an athlete or actor who runs for office)? Air time or newspaper column inches for your surrogates writing op eds? Do self funded candidates need to plaster their own name on things? * Whose names? What about when a candidate gets a favorable ad run by a group like Planned Parenthood or the NRA? Do we get to see the underlying donors, or do we stick with just the last step in the chain? Because the vast majority of political organizations have very non-descriptive names like \"Americans for Prosperity\" or \"Priorities USA\" or \"The Rent is Too Damn High Party\" or \"Emily's List.\" * What threshold? Do donors have to be disclosed for small donations? * What about multiple candidate organizations, like the DCCC or Texas GOP? Do the donors to each of those organizations have to get listed on all the candidates that organization supports? * How long? If I donate to a state representative in 2020, do they still keep my name on when they run for state Senate in 2024, for governor in 2030, for president in 2040? The current rules already require disclosure on lists, for people to do what they'd like with the data. Forcing them to display that data in a non-interactive format in meatspace is probably counterproductive compared to letting people generate interesting data visualizations online.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "At least give some credit to Robin Williams for coming up with this joke. Its the least you can do.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "so that the mods don't delete my, \"written up vote\", here is a perfunctory argument to change your view, not that i disagree, but that you haven't gone far enough w/ this brilliance. the jumpsuits should not stop at nascar style, they should add the full glitz of the vegas strip. each speech should be interrupted by youtube style ads from their sponsors. the \"white house\" should be auctioned off for naming rights. etc. etc. etc.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "At least give some credit to Robin Williams for coming up with this joke. Its the least you can do.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: politicians should be required to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits showing all their major sponsors. In recent days some have decried the POTUS and FDOTUS brazenly ignoring federal ethics laws by posing with a certain company's bean products. But I welcome it. The ethics rules really just obscure behind a thin veneer the truth of American politics: namely, many politicians are just in it for their friends and donors. We shouldn't hide it anymore. Make these allegiances visible, front-and-center. We should make it mandatory for politicians appearing in public to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits with their major sponsors emblazoned across their bodies. Then we'll more readily know who they're beholden to and which companies we may want to boycott or patronize. Change my view.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Politicians shouldn't be sponsored at all. They are representatives of the voters, not companies. Lobbying is anti-democratic, since not everyone is equal; those with more money have more power. While it doesn't stop backhand deals and preferential treatment, banning lobbying aligns the motives of politicians closer to their voters, and limits the overt corruption, which is an overwhelming net benefit. Corporate sponsorship of politicians is at its core, corruption. It is using money to influence policy, rather than grassroots support.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Gonna go from a different angle since I agree that \"left wing\" media is more controlled and \"truthful\" but it's obvious all MSM has a serious problem, and that problem is profit. It's not just why 5 people died last week, it's also why Princess Diana died and why people think Spiderman is a bad guy. Media has taken the phrase \"studies show\" to meme status and present it as fact for example. They want headlines because headlines = $$$$$. And what produces the most $$$ per day? Running 24 hours with only 4 hours devoted to news and 20 hours devoted to opinions which may or may not be based in fact or even probability. We're all at fault. I don't care how many puppies got adopted last year. Don't lie, neither do you. I do care about a horrible trainwreck and what exactly happened between Aniston, Pitt, and Jolie. They sell what people are buying. And people have increasingly been buying partisan politics. The reason Fox News does so well is they filled a market void. They did the same thing with network television. Fox is the most liberal channel in television history behind Comedy Central. The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, The X Files, In Living Color, and especially Married with Children. It's how they broke into the market - edgy, often liberal humor at a time when the other 5 channels on television were very conservative. There is no easy answer. So far we've been getting by on the fact that the almighty $$$$ often outweighs any personal liberties they want to take with the truth. Fox News would show footage of Mitch McConnell slipping on a banana peel because they value $$$$ more than any perceived bias. They are also having to increasingly compete with the internet. Best thing I can think of off the top of my head is an academic focused journalism institute with clear, peer reviewed public funding and stipends to journalists.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Are there any media sources/outlets that both sides currently agree on?", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Gonna go from a different angle since I agree that \"left wing\" media is more controlled and \"truthful\" but it's obvious all MSM has a serious problem, and that problem is profit. It's not just why 5 people died last week, it's also why Princess Diana died and why people think Spiderman is a bad guy. Media has taken the phrase \"studies show\" to meme status and present it as fact for example. They want headlines because headlines = $$$$$. And what produces the most $$$ per day? Running 24 hours with only 4 hours devoted to news and 20 hours devoted to opinions which may or may not be based in fact or even probability. We're all at fault. I don't care how many puppies got adopted last year. Don't lie, neither do you. I do care about a horrible trainwreck and what exactly happened between Aniston, Pitt, and Jolie. They sell what people are buying. And people have increasingly been buying partisan politics. The reason Fox News does so well is they filled a market void. They did the same thing with network television. Fox is the most liberal channel in television history behind Comedy Central. The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, The X Files, In Living Color, and especially Married with Children. It's how they broke into the market - edgy, often liberal humor at a time when the other 5 channels on television were very conservative. There is no easy answer. So far we've been getting by on the fact that the almighty $$$$ often outweighs any personal liberties they want to take with the truth. Fox News would show footage of Mitch McConnell slipping on a banana peel because they value $$$$ more than any perceived bias. They are also having to increasingly compete with the internet. Best thing I can think of off the top of my head is an academic focused journalism institute with clear, peer reviewed public funding and stipends to journalists.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Liberal media was just as sensationalist as conservative media. They repeated lies from people like Adam schiff. Rachel Maddow was banging the russia collusion drum forever and she was dead wrong. The left wing media will lie and lie and lie and liberals eat it up. The whole “fine people on both sides” being used as an excuse to say trump called nazis fine people was a left wing lie that was easily debunked and liberals *still* use that line. I did not see this type of rabid hate when Obama was president. I did not see anyone on Fox News say black men are the biggest threat to our safety (don lemon called white men that). These realities are created by media and yes, both sides are just as guilty of creating them. You see these downvotes and replies that are incorrect? This just proves my point.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Gonna go from a different angle since I agree that \"left wing\" media is more controlled and \"truthful\" but it's obvious all MSM has a serious problem, and that problem is profit. It's not just why 5 people died last week, it's also why Princess Diana died and why people think Spiderman is a bad guy. Media has taken the phrase \"studies show\" to meme status and present it as fact for example. They want headlines because headlines = $$$$$. And what produces the most $$$ per day? Running 24 hours with only 4 hours devoted to news and 20 hours devoted to opinions which may or may not be based in fact or even probability. We're all at fault. I don't care how many puppies got adopted last year. Don't lie, neither do you. I do care about a horrible trainwreck and what exactly happened between Aniston, Pitt, and Jolie. They sell what people are buying. And people have increasingly been buying partisan politics. The reason Fox News does so well is they filled a market void. They did the same thing with network television. Fox is the most liberal channel in television history behind Comedy Central. The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, The X Files, In Living Color, and especially Married with Children. It's how they broke into the market - edgy, often liberal humor at a time when the other 5 channels on television were very conservative. There is no easy answer. So far we've been getting by on the fact that the almighty $$$$ often outweighs any personal liberties they want to take with the truth. Fox News would show footage of Mitch McConnell slipping on a banana peel because they value $$$$ more than any perceived bias. They are also having to increasingly compete with the internet. Best thing I can think of off the top of my head is an academic focused journalism institute with clear, peer reviewed public funding and stipends to journalists.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "So to summarize your post \"We need to end the division, and conservatives bad! no left wing outlet radicalizes people!\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Gonna go from a different angle since I agree that \"left wing\" media is more controlled and \"truthful\" but it's obvious all MSM has a serious problem, and that problem is profit. It's not just why 5 people died last week, it's also why Princess Diana died and why people think Spiderman is a bad guy. Media has taken the phrase \"studies show\" to meme status and present it as fact for example. They want headlines because headlines = $$$$$. And what produces the most $$$ per day? Running 24 hours with only 4 hours devoted to news and 20 hours devoted to opinions which may or may not be based in fact or even probability. We're all at fault. I don't care how many puppies got adopted last year. Don't lie, neither do you. I do care about a horrible trainwreck and what exactly happened between Aniston, Pitt, and Jolie. They sell what people are buying. And people have increasingly been buying partisan politics. The reason Fox News does so well is they filled a market void. They did the same thing with network television. Fox is the most liberal channel in television history behind Comedy Central. The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, The X Files, In Living Color, and especially Married with Children. It's how they broke into the market - edgy, often liberal humor at a time when the other 5 channels on television were very conservative. There is no easy answer. So far we've been getting by on the fact that the almighty $$$$ often outweighs any personal liberties they want to take with the truth. Fox News would show footage of Mitch McConnell slipping on a banana peel because they value $$$$ more than any perceived bias. They are also having to increasingly compete with the internet. Best thing I can think of off the top of my head is an academic focused journalism institute with clear, peer reviewed public funding and stipends to journalists.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "While I agree with most of what you said, I do want to address one point. You say that \"most Americans want \\[...\\] some agreement and compromise\". As somebody on the left of the political spectrum, I have mixed feelings on the question. Every time we get into power, everybody calls for agreement, compromise and bipartisanship. Whenever Republicans are in power, it's all about ramming through whatever they can do. If Republicans are willing to play fair for a change, I'm happy to have them along for the ride. I don't think that we should change our policies to suit them, though, when they flatly refuse to extend us the same courtesy. This opinion is shared by the vast majority of my friends on the left of the aisle that I know.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This isn't really a CMV, but I feel like it's important to say anyhow. Your title says that democrats and Republicans are living in different realities. However, your post said that democrats are sane and Republicans are not. If the post is what you meant, change your title. If the title is what you meant, change your post", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Are there any media sources/outlets that both sides currently agree on?", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Liberal media was just as sensationalist as conservative media. They repeated lies from people like Adam schiff. Rachel Maddow was banging the russia collusion drum forever and she was dead wrong. The left wing media will lie and lie and lie and liberals eat it up. The whole “fine people on both sides” being used as an excuse to say trump called nazis fine people was a left wing lie that was easily debunked and liberals *still* use that line. I did not see this type of rabid hate when Obama was president. I did not see anyone on Fox News say black men are the biggest threat to our safety (don lemon called white men that). These realities are created by media and yes, both sides are just as guilty of creating them. You see these downvotes and replies that are incorrect? This just proves my point.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "So to summarize your post \"We need to end the division, and conservatives bad! no left wing outlet radicalizes people!\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I used to be a hardcore democrat. Mainly because I am an atheist. I was under the impression that Republicans want borderline theocratic rule which goes completely against my belief system. When the BLM riots started this year I felt something was off. It didn't make sense to me. Why are black people so upset because some drug addict who lived a life of crime died. Meanwhile tons of completely innocent black people are victimized by people like George Floyd. If you're going to riot, shouldn't you be rioting to protect them first? I lived in Gainesville Florida my whole life. I have very close friends who are black. Regardless the whole BLM thing just felt completely off to me. So I started watching conservative media. For the first time in my life. Up to that point it was just \"those guys are full of shit no point in even hearing them out\". But because for the first time in my life I was actually agreeing with them I started listening. I think it's because of the cognitive dissonance I felt towards the BLM movement. So let's talk about facts and liberal media. According to you the level of liary (word I made up) is not comparable. Right media lies far more frequently. Breonna Taylor case. What was the initial report. A) She was sleeping in her home. B) Cops had the wrong house. C) Cops had a no knock warrant and barged in. D) Cops shot her dead in her bed. How much of that is true? Basically none of it. A & C & D) She wasn't sleeping because the cops knocked loudly which woke her up. She died in her hallway. She was shot after her boyfriend shot at the cops. If anything them knocking is partially why she died. They should have just busted in. B) The cops were at the exact house that the warrant was written for. Even her name was on the warrant. There may be disagreement on whether the cops should have gone after the warrant. Whether they fucked up the raid. etc etc. But there is absolutely no truth to statements A B C D. It's understandable that some facts about the case may be misrepresented when the story initially breaks. That's normal, that's ok. But the liberal media is pushing the ABCD shit to this day. TO THIS DAY. Months after all of this has come out to be false. Being honest and telling the truth just doesn't seem to matter. You just pick a sound byte and keep repeating it. And that's just one example. There are many like it. The media as a whole both Right and Left are more interested in views and ad revenue. Actually informing the public has taken a backseat. It's basically no longer their role. They are just there to entertain. This is where the division comes from.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I would argue that, while news sources do help add to the divide, the bigger factor here is actually that Democrats and Republicans actually physically live in different realities. Living in a city today compared to living in a rural or suburban area has never seemed more different. And the way people vote reflects this. If you think about some of the biggest wedge issues - healthcare, education, policing, etc. these issues impact people very differently in cities compares to more rural areas. It’s much easier to be self-reliant in a rural area, whereas in a bit city, you more heavily rely on publicly funded services and SEE people that rely on these services every day. This influences how you consume news - you are drawn to things that you can relate to. When right wing media goes on about small government and how the government is incompetent and shouldn’t have a big role in our lives, that really speaks to a rural area person who can very easily understand that concept and it doesn’t impact their day to day much. The idea of less government to someone who lives in a city is probably scary, because it’s evident how important a role the local governments are to the functionality of the city. So, when you hear things like increasing education and healthcare and public transportation funding via taxes, you can easily see how those things will improve your day to day and the day to day of the people you see in the city. This is how we end up with a 2020 Election Result with such a massive divide along urban/rural lines.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "While I agree with most of what you said, I do want to address one point. You say that \"most Americans want \\[...\\] some agreement and compromise\". As somebody on the left of the political spectrum, I have mixed feelings on the question. Every time we get into power, everybody calls for agreement, compromise and bipartisanship. Whenever Republicans are in power, it's all about ramming through whatever they can do. If Republicans are willing to play fair for a change, I'm happy to have them along for the ride. I don't think that we should change our policies to suit them, though, when they flatly refuse to extend us the same courtesy. This opinion is shared by the vast majority of my friends on the left of the aisle that I know.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This isn't really a CMV, but I feel like it's important to say anyhow. Your title says that democrats and Republicans are living in different realities. However, your post said that democrats are sane and Republicans are not. If the post is what you meant, change your title. If the title is what you meant, change your post", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Are there any media sources/outlets that both sides currently agree on?", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This isn't really a CMV, but I feel like it's important to say anyhow. Your title says that democrats and Republicans are living in different realities. However, your post said that democrats are sane and Republicans are not. If the post is what you meant, change your title. If the title is what you meant, change your post", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Liberal media was just as sensationalist as conservative media. They repeated lies from people like Adam schiff. Rachel Maddow was banging the russia collusion drum forever and she was dead wrong. The left wing media will lie and lie and lie and liberals eat it up. The whole “fine people on both sides” being used as an excuse to say trump called nazis fine people was a left wing lie that was easily debunked and liberals *still* use that line. I did not see this type of rabid hate when Obama was president. I did not see anyone on Fox News say black men are the biggest threat to our safety (don lemon called white men that). These realities are created by media and yes, both sides are just as guilty of creating them. You see these downvotes and replies that are incorrect? This just proves my point.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This isn't really a CMV, but I feel like it's important to say anyhow. Your title says that democrats and Republicans are living in different realities. However, your post said that democrats are sane and Republicans are not. If the post is what you meant, change your title. If the title is what you meant, change your post", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "So to summarize your post \"We need to end the division, and conservatives bad! no left wing outlet radicalizes people!\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This isn't really a CMV, but I feel like it's important to say anyhow. Your title says that democrats and Republicans are living in different realities. However, your post said that democrats are sane and Republicans are not. If the post is what you meant, change your title. If the title is what you meant, change your post", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "CMV: Democrats and Republicans live in completely different realities and it is destroying our country. I would guess that a typical Democrat gets their news from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, NYT, etc. And the average conservative gets his news from Fox News, Talk Radio, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, YouTubers like Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro, etc. If you go more into the fringes of the right they probably get their news from QAnon and other conspiracy Facebook groups. This disparity in where both sides of the political aisle gets their news from is what I believe is causing the massive division and polarization we see. We can't agree on basic facts of reality like whether the 2020 election was fair. I think one clear measure we can take is enforcing anti-trust laws on broadcast and media companies. The fact that the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group covers 40% of American households, disproportionately in rural areas, is what is leading to the brainwashing of these rural conservatives. Another thing we can do is stop with this \"both sides\" meme. Both sides aren't just as bad when it comes to sensational media and disinformation. There is no left equivalent in terms of disinformation to QAnon. Like, we literally have QAnon supporters as congress people (i.e. Marjorie Taylor Greene). MSNBC or CNN never engaged in sensationalism on the level of the birther movement that Fox News engaged in. Sure, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post do attack Trump a lot, but they do it on issues that Trump should be attacked on. In contrast, remember when Fox News had a whole media cycle dedicated to Obama ordering a burger with Dijon mustard? At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that most Americans want less division, less polarization, some agreement and compromise so we can get things done (fixing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, healthcare reform, immigration reform, etc.). But we can't accomplish any of that if we don't fix the vast disparity in our media and news consumption.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "While I agree with most of what you said, I do want to address one point. You say that \"most Americans want \\[...\\] some agreement and compromise\". As somebody on the left of the political spectrum, I have mixed feelings on the question. Every time we get into power, everybody calls for agreement, compromise and bipartisanship. Whenever Republicans are in power, it's all about ramming through whatever they can do. If Republicans are willing to play fair for a change, I'm happy to have them along for the ride. I don't think that we should change our policies to suit them, though, when they flatly refuse to extend us the same courtesy. This opinion is shared by the vast majority of my friends on the left of the aisle that I know.", "role": "assistant" } ]