[quote=@Shorticus]
...Which is a way of looking at Obamacare that I never considered, but it fits my perception of Obama. He's not an idiot. He's cunning. He's just not of the soundest moral character and focused a lot of energy into making good sales pitches that he didn't make good on.
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Yeh, he's a machine politician, but I'll take anything that gets any sort of result I like. Republics are a cutthroat system after all. And I suppose after coming of age in the Bush years the entire idea of a President who does anything I respect is almost a novelty. He's sort of like an LBJ in that respect; sullied by a hawkish geopolitical stance and a cold approach to politics, but willing to play the game to get a few progressive things through. That he managed to do anything remotely progressive in the Reaganist era of American politics is impressive. Gotta consider that the old-school Progressives, like FDR and Truman and LBJ, still had that racist vote from the south making it relatively easy for them to pass things that weren't civil rights. When LBJ threw away the southern vote to sign the Civil Rights Act (another good point for that controversial president) he created this situation where the Dems are always shit out of luck when it comes to passing things. I mean, what is the Clinton administration most known for policy wise? NAFTA, a free trade agreement?

[quote=@Dinh AaronMk]
Fun-fact: even Adam Smith supports the idea that taxing a product is ultimately a benefit for the entire economy.

Eat shit political economists, your Jesus has abandoned you.
[/quote]

Yeh, a lot of what people call "Free Market Economics" is actually a watered down version of "Austrian Economics". The entire "Taxation is Theft" line, for instance, is hella Austrian. Trickle Down economics is also basically a tooled up version of the Austrian model. And what Austrian economics is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, is a morality argument pretending to be a system of economics. I've seen more economists insult arguments by comparing them to the Austrian school then I ever have seen comparing to Marxism, and that is saying something.

As for Adam Smith, his entire thesis is that punitive taxes are bad. He also argued for labor unions well before any started to form, that long term educational requirements wasted the labor of youth, and he had a tendency to snark about how stock holders complain about the price of labor but never say a word about their own income from the stock.

[quote=@SleepingSilence]
[@Shorticus] http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/11/10/obamacare-architect-yeah-we-lied-to-the-stupid-american-people-n1916605 This is all that's going through my mind when obamacare is mentioned. -.-

[@Vilageidiotx]The main thing seems to be about pollution and environment. But I already said how government restriction made that actually worse, via Cap-Trade. And the way you can get people to not pollute is by creating private propriety, so for example, someone buys a lake and if someone damages their lake they bought, they can sue for damages. You might be right that were arguing different things, but I still thinks its common sense that all of these bullshit regulations DO hurt small businesses and saying they don't just doesn't make any kind of sense. There's another on a list that forced people to put calorie counts on all items on their menus, which costs a ton of work hours (time = money) to accomplish. Its not always state level, their's flat out bad regulations period. And environmental restrictions are often far too extreme. I don't think it's exactly as black and white as you made it out to be. And our tax system is ranked 53 in ease of use...I don't think I could call anything 'good taxes' with a straight face how are system is currently.

I don't think being a massive failure and purposefully lying a bunch and all the other things that the bill did or tried to do, was a very smart thing at all...That's beyond overthinking and giving him far too much credit frankly. I think it's a little silly to respect someone for that. But I guess when you call something the literal Best, I was under the impression you didn't think it was a failure. :P Well I don't dislike discussing politics, but there's warning signs where you know you will not get anywhere in discussing them...I respect that you are far more sensible than most. But I just don't want this to become a toxic thing and it's seems to be unavoidable if it goes on too long. I just know, more people DON'T like politics and prefer to keep people as happy as possible. I mean its not exactly, a political thread. ^-^ (Maybe someone needs to make a thread for it...)
[/quote]

If you really want to end it, you're going to have to sacrifice the last word I'm afraid, because imma feel a need to answer myself, it just how I be. =p

You presented one way that pollution regulation can go wrong. I could point to the slave-trade as an example of why capitalism is wrong, but both your and my arguments would be disingenuous. Specific examples are only arguments against those specific examples, but we are talking about broader systems. Also, saying that making all property private property will somehow end pollution is silly as hell. Do we make all the Rivers private property? How do you privatize the water table? And even then it makes no sense because why on earth are we assuming a guy who owns a company is more interested in how pretty his lake is then the cheapest way to dump things? So now we've sold our lakes and businesses are dumping shit into those lakes, the chemicals entering the water table will inevitably fail to respect property boundaries and now the water table is poisoned. 

As for Obama, him lying and all that can be the smart thing to do. Moral? Naw. Honest? Obviously not. But it got him where he wanted to go, so it does seem to be smart. I have no compunction about how this system works. In a Republic, dishonesty and dirty dealing is the name of the game. You'd need somebody more educated in American political history like [@Byrd Man] to list all the dirty shit your favorite Presidents pulled to achieve their goals. Now, I am not calling Obama my favorite my any means. I'm just saying I can respect a liar if I think their lies did something that'll be good in the long term. 

And like I said a couple of times, I recognize that there are tax complications and regulations that could be cut. I think you're [i]thinking[/i] I'm being black and white, but in reality I'm playing way too much in the grey area for a comfortable political discussion. Like I said before, in the same way I see Obama's immorality as being just part of how Republics work, I naturally don't trust the right-wing politicians who talk about cutting those complications and regulations. Because, to me, their just using the shitty rules to hide an attempt to ham-string the good ones. Hell, Ted Cruz literally wants to fire me.