I may get run out of town on a rail... . Having pets is unnatural and strange. . Pot should be legal, but smoking it should not be. . We should have to prove our need for a pickup truck or an engine in a car larger than about 1.6L. . This one isn't mine, but I heard it the other day: if you receive public assistance, you lose the right to vote.
Mortgage interest tax deduction is another big one.
For sure, and that one only applies to upper middle class people. There are too many to name, really, even just looking at the tax code. The list could get exhaustive if we started talking about all the ways in which the government supports businesses that affect consumer prices (that again, mostly rich people benefit from). That number is large enough that the total dollar value of line item tax breaks for specific businesses is larger than the Bush tax cuts on the top income bracket (according to an NPR report from a couple years ago when the rollback of that tax was being debated). "Public assistance" is one of the things that illustrates the dire need we have for tax reform in this country. The one thing I agree with Trump on is that the system is rigged (although I'm not sure we'd agree on prescriptive solutions).
The guy I was talking to was talking about food stamps, section 8 housing, and other forms of cash subsidies to the poor. For some reason he seems to want further disenfranchise the disenfranchised... or something. His main contention was that as the population of people who are entirely reliant on governmental support grows, they will continue to only vote for public officers who commit to spend more on those systems.
Is he familiar with Medicare? How about real estate depreciation? Department of Defense contractors? Recipients of all of these programs routinely vote for candidates that support their continued existence, the difference being that old people, developers, and defense contractors have actual political power.
agreed - like I said - not mine... just one I heard. In fact, he and I got into a discussion because he went on to say "ok, maybe not no vote, but like a fractional vote" which I told him sounded a little like when slaves were counted as some fraction of a "person".
I am a grumpy old man... I can't enjoy a summer afternoon in the park or a cool summer evening in my backyard without smelling weed. I don't think I'm being overly sensitive or prudish. Last night I put up a screen and a projector - my kids had some friends over to watch a movie in our backyard. How fun! until the neighbors started to blaze... I'm not trying to pick on weed necessarily - I don't like smelling cigarette smoke, cow manure, diesel exhaust, sulphur, or other industrial fumes either. It's just annoying that one person's consumption has to inflict discomfort on people in their vicinity. . So please consume marijuana - but just quit smoking it anywhere that affects other people - eat it, tincture it, SOMETHING... but smoke it? smoke? it boggles my mind.Care to elaborate?
I agree that the culture around the illegal use of weed, is largely smoking it. But here in WA, that culture changed overnight. My wife is a weed smoker, and we were with friends the other night who were simply flabbergasted that she SMOKED it! None of them knew anyone who still smoked weed... they all imbibed in other forms. But my wife is an old Deadhead traditionalist, and smokes very little (two tokes, twice a week). So calling her a "smoker" is way overstating her use. But yeah... around here, in my Burner/Deadhead community? People went from smoking to ANY other form of intake almost overnight. And passing the joint? Nobody shares any more. Now that there are so many carefully cultivated and mass-produced strains, everyone has their own particular favorite, and almost never smokes anyone else's stuff. The culture has changed a LOT here. Very quickly.
while this may be true... I kinda don't care what people choose to do to their own bodies... for me, the smoke is a "public" issue. It is very difficult to control smoke. If I'm BBQing, smoking a cigarette, or lighting a joint, people within several meters of me in every direction are going to know about it.