Why hasn't Toriyama paid his taxes yet?

[Saimaroimaru]

It's pretty amazing to me as someone who only just discovered in the past year or so that our political system--heck, our 'thought system'--is such a façade. I used to think like so many of us that there was only GOP and Democrat but in the past year I've learned that the Democrats aren't even really Democrats anymore, they're just center-right Republican-lites and it's blown my mind. Learning about the progressive ideas our presidents were fighting for in the early 1900s is fascinating. Did you know President Taft argued for two or three months of paid vacation per year by law? In other modern nations our fellow humans have at least one month by law and possibly even more if their unions were crafty enough. Taft was a republican, for god's sake! It really shows you just how far-right into authoritarian neo-feudalism our nation has swung and why it is important that--like with taxes being progressive--we shift back to the left politically and in our media. Even the majority of republican voters believe in many, many progressive and solidly left ideas (living wage, free college, Medicare For All, legalizing weed). I've learned not to blame GOP voters as a whole, but rather GOP leaders. We have Trump because people were desperate and even if he was lying at least he was running as a populist leftist (and he was lying). Clinton just ran with empty platitudes and clichés. It still pisses me off that I couldn't vote for Sanders or wasn't educated enough to vote for Jill Stein.

Anyhoo, the moral of the story is to pay your taxes and eat an apple a day!

Democrats Center Right? Lets look at the overall voting record on legislation in Congress.

https://tinyurl.com/ycdgqbmv

The problem is that one party has moved so far in one direction that on appearance the other looks centrists by default because the strategy has been to court those who were "left behind" in an attempt at being a big tent party. But you can put that "Democrats are the real Republicans!" false message to rest.

Given the recent revelations that Jill Stein had her own connections to Putin(you know that pic with her sitting at the same table as Putin as with the others in the same photo who themselves have been hit this year by the FBI when their stuff came to light), you were right to not vote for her. Third parties always have a spoiler affect in US political history. Happened in 1912 and happened in 1992 in a big way.

[majinwarman]

Again, what Freeza did was conquer planets and sell them to the highest bidder. Toriyama's accountants put his money in countries with lower tax rates to lower what he's legally obligated to pay. That's not dishonest unless he is telling people he's less wealthy than he actually is. Even then, equivocating him with a fictional monster like Freeza or a thug like Capone is one step too far.

I agree. We don't need to consider him a horrible person because he took advantage of other countries's laws.

And if Japan allows him to put some of his money elsewhere, he's not taking advantage of something in an unethical way. He would still be conforming to Japan's tax laws.

That's one way of thinking about it.

[Cipher]

Anyone who knows how society works knows that unless the wealthy carry the tax burden the working class will suffer and society eill collapse.

That's a somewhat perverse view of how a society should function. It's not up to a selected few to pay taxes for everyone. If taxes are to exist (and they don't necessarily have to in a significant way), the fair way to do it is to have a flat rate for all. To discriminate and penalize legitimate success, therefore killing any incentive to inovation and progress, is what I would say to be the fastest way to collapse a society.

I have to break DB talk for a minute to address this.

Yes, in terms of pure egalitarian logic, on the surface, a flat rate tax seems like a nice policy. I make $5 a year, another guy makes $500, the country imposes a flat rate of 1/5 income. I pay $1, he pays $100.

But: It also takes a certain naivety to not see some crippling problems there, as far as burdening lower classes. Let's bring certain life essentials or other quality-of-life indicators into this imaginary society. Raising a kid costs $2 per year. An emergency medical or auto expenditure costs another $2.

Now even though there's a tidy-looking flat rate, the person making $5 has taken a significant hit to their financial security. Meanwhile, the person with the income of $500, even with their $400 take-home, can have kids and afford emergency expenditures dozens of times over. Even if you changed the numbers, so that the person with the higher income paid a greater percentage of their salary, absolutely nothing is removing motivation from the lower earner to rise above their current level and increase their security.

And some inequality in terms of quality of life is a granted. And yes, the promise of social mobility depends on it. But blow this up and you an see how a flat rate places the greatest comparative burden on the people with the least financial security and flexibility. And no matter how you slice it, if a certain amount of resources must come from somewhere, that's grotesque. (Not to mention unsustainable--trying to build a society of commerce while undercutting its bottom.) It also ignores the real issue of quality-of-life improvements operating on diminishing returns. There's little to know functional difference between a take-home income of ten million per year and one-hundred million. But, below that, there's is still motivation to reach more secure levels.

You can go back and forth fairly on the specifics of amounts, but there's a reason flat-rate policies continue to see counter-arguments.

Re: Thread: Toriyama's one of my favorite comic artists. He's a funny guy. I suspect he probably wasn't aware of the exact details of his financial handlings. But he should pay his taxes if he hasn't. More than anything, it's discouraging to imagine he might be so greedy as to bristle at the notion of paying in what is, if substantial, to him certainly excess cash.

And if Japan allows him to put some of his money elsewhere, he's not taking advantage of something in an unethical way. He would still be conforming to Japan's tax laws.

Maybe I'm drawing the layout of a town on a map here, but I'm fairly certain he didn't get into trouble for failing to conform to Japan's tax laws by conforming to Japan's tax laws.

[RandomGuy96]

Nothing makes me laugh harder than people without any education in economics citing other people without any education economics ("journalists", just lol, I'm sure their English degrees taught them much about investment banking, international trade, and labor elasticity) to prove non-existent points about Economics. The blind leading the blind.

[Kunzait_83]

Nothing makes me laugh harder than people without any education in economics citing other people without any education economics ("journalists", just lol, I'm sure their English degrees taught them much about investment banking, international trade, and labor elasticity) to prove non-existent points about Economics. The blind leading the blind.

This is a grotesquely ignorant thing to say.

There are all different KINDS of journalists within a wide array of fields of expertise in what they primarily cover. War corespondents have to make it their business to know the details of military tactics and strategies as well as the political history of the regions in which the war that they're covering is being waged. Political journalists (ideally at least: there are some within that field to whom this doesn't apply due to things like nepotism and such) have to know their shit about electoral laws and the history of electoral politics as well as be on top of the elastic ebb and flow over time that comes with various forms of political jargon and doublespeak.

This same principal is no different whatsoever for business and economic journalism. While yes, in every field there are voices that are either ignorant (due to aforementioned factors like nepotism) or purposefully dishonest/disingenuous (due to factors like bribery and shady journalistic outlets they might work for) there are nonetheless a plenty large amount of business journalists out there who MORE than know their shit about economics, about the history of trade, pricing and inflation, housing and urban development, insurance laws, and some of the most arcane and in-depth stock market minutia you can conceivably imagine.

They HAVE to, because its their fucking JOB to cover these topics in as much depth as possible. It isn't uncommon for a journalist within a specific field to have an education within that particular given field: the idea that "if you're a journalist, then all you have is an English/writing degree" is not only wrong, its colossally, almost downright profoundly childish in its ignorance.

In point of fact, actual economists, at least within the Western world, have a noted history of flagrant DISHONESTY with the public (if not outright delusional incompetence) about their profession: mostly due to financial corruption, greed, and bad incentives. Again, not ALL economists, there are some honest and damn smart ones out there: but there are nonetheless a strikingly noteworthy number of economists throughout recent history who are notably grotesquely wrongheaded and damagingly backwards in most of the economic theories and ideologies that they've peddled (Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan being two of the most notoriously notable off the top of my head).

Its been the role of some business and economic journalists (the ones who are good at their job anyway, i.e. ones who usually aren't found writing for Forbes or the Wall Street Journal) to try and keep these people as honest as they can and to sort the sobering, cold hard reality of the markets from the delusional fairy tales that many notable economists are unfortunately prone to buying into and preaching as gospel truth.

Its been the role of bad economists, often deluded by an almost Randian outlook of economics over the past 50-something years now, to continually sweet talk many of our political leaders into buying into all manner of faulty and ridiculously self-destructive economic theories and ideas (including, but not limited to, supply-side/trickle down economics, flagrant banking and housing deregulation, modern austerity practices, etc) resulting in untold horrific damage to the modern economy and the ever-growing divide in economic classes. A downright mortifying number of modern economists still continually cling to long-discredited economic theories and practices, many of which continue to hurt and financially cripple the average working men and women of today, destroying countless lives in the process.

Business and economic journalists, generally those working from outside the Wall Street bubble (and thus have a more firm connection with the day to day reality of average working people), have been largely responsible for sifting through and making sense of a lot of the rampant scam artistry and BS that's typically peddled to the general public by high stakes investors and banking CEOs and so forth.

Its been the work of smart and knowledgeable economic journalists that's been responsible for educating the public (to whatever extent that they can) as to the inner workings and nature of things like the 2008 housing market crash, the student loan debt crisis, the 2001-2003 Bush tax cuts, the Affordable Healthcare Act and its numerous complicated drawbacks and virtues, and now presently Trump's current tax policies, among COUNTLESS other, and tremendously important economic topics and issues that quite literally decide the fates of millions upon millions of people's lives.

[RandomGuy96]

Nothing makes me laugh harder than people without any education in economics citing other people without any education economics ("journalists", just lol, I'm sure their English degrees taught them much about investment banking, international trade, and labor elasticity) to prove non-existent points about Economics. The blind leading the blind.

This is a grotesquely ignorant thing to say.

Guess how I can tell you that you don't have a degree in Economics or Finance.

There are all different KINDS of journalists within a wide array of fields of expertise in what they primarily cover. War corespondents have to make it their business to know the details of military tactics and strategies as well as the political history of the regions in which the war that they're covering is being waged.

I've read enough war correspondents (and economics journalists, and political journalists, and foreign relations journalists) to understand that they generally know very little about what they're talking about.

It isn't uncommon for a journalist within a specific field to have an education within that particular given field: the idea that "if you're a journalist, then all you have is an English/writing degree" is not only wrong, its colossally, almost downright profoundly childish in its ignorance.

The fake outrage here is hilarious considering the guy who were extolling on the matter of Economics literally admitted that he never took a single class on Economics. Most of the people you listed are in the same boat. The reason for that is because most people who had actually studied Economics would never say such stupid shit.

the student loan debt crisis

This is a persistent myth and an example of skewed priorities. The average student loan debt is about $25,000, including loans taken out for living expenses and for private schools, whereas the majority of public university students in somewhere like California pay zero tuition. The average graduate makes $50,000 out the door and $75,000 mid-career (assuming you're just the average and aren't making six figures by then due to getting a degree in something useful, like, say... Economics). Paying off such a debt, which usually has an interest rate barely above the rate of inflation and a hard cap on how long they can last before being forgiven, is utterly trivial. The "crisis" is entirely the result of
A. the US being way too generous with who it lets go to college (other countries like Germany generally have heavy barriers to entry to filter out the worst students).
B. a lot of students being idiots who dropped out, got degrees in something useless, blew a bunch of money before paying their debt, or all three (the 'drop-out' point is probably why defaults are the greatest among people who borrowed the least).
C. a lot of parents being idiots by refusing to save for their kids' education. With the way financial aid works, literally every student who took out massive loans had parents that had enough income to pay for their schooling.

In point of fact, actual economists, at least within the Western world, have a noted history of flagrant DISHONESTY with the public (if not outright delusional incompetence) about their profession: mostly due to financial corruption, greed, and bad incentives.

Cool, thanks for outing yourself as the horseshoe equivalent of a climate change denier. Saves me from having to engage an obviously crazy person. I bet you voted for Mr. 'Venezuela is a paradise and the Fed should be chaired by farmers.'

[Cure Dragon 255]

Um...if you are going to be THIS rude you could at least show how much you DO know about this.

[Kunzait_83]

I've read enough war correspondents (and economics journalists, and political journalists, and foreign relations journalists) to understand that they generally know very little about what they're talking about.

I've read more than my share of shitty journalists too: but painting the ENTIRE profession with a broad brush as "they all don't know anything about what they're talking about" is absurdly reductive, at best.

For all the shit I gave economists above, I STILL allowed for the fact that there are indeed some damn good ones out there, so its hardly like these things are universal. Being 100% universally dismissive of ANY profession as important as any of these is... unwise and rash, to say the least.

I've been to my share of bad doctors, for example, who've given me incredibly poor treatment: that doesn't therefore mean I'm ready to completely write off ALL doctors across the fucking board as a bunch of quacks who don't know shit from shinola. If god forbid I get cancer or heart disease or what have you somewhere along the way, guess who I'm still going to?

Just because you have abject shithead journalists writing for outlets like The Weekly Standard or Breitbart or Politico and so forth, doesn't therefore mean that the ENTIRE profession 100% across the board is completely worthless and full of nothing but similar know-nothings who deal in nonsense. EVERYTHING requires nuance and distinctions case by case.

The fake outrage here is hilarious considering the guy who were extolling on the matter of Economics literally admitted that he never took a single class on Economics. Most of the people you listed are in the same boat. The reason for that is because most people who had actually studied Economics would never say such stupid shit.

Most of the other journalists I named earlier I didn't list in the context of economics: just general solid journalistic writings in a wide array of fields.

Taibbi yes, I've extolled on the stellar work in economics reporting he's done. No, he hasn't been formally educated in economics, but I've also read more than my share of people who HAVE been, and much of Taibbi's work still easily stands up with the very best of them; in large part because he does his homework and does hard investigative journalism among actual industry insiders, including former Goldman Sachs executives and mortgage lenders involved in the exact types of Credit Default Swap derivatives that nearly caved in our economy at the tail-end of the Bush years.

Instead of being glibly snide with vagaries as "saying such stupid shit" how about putting your money where your mouth is (so to speak) and getting down to actual SPECIFICS of WHAT precisely he's so wrong and "stupid" regarding? Otherwise what sense is there in just popping in to take a totally random potshot without actually backing it up with ANY kind of actual substance that might add something to the conversation or actually demonstrate why exactly it is that something said is in fact wrong?

Because as someone who's indeed read most of Taibbi's work, AND those of actual economists and financial experts, much of Taibbi's writings on the behind the scenes goings on of slimy insider trading generally holds up pretty damn well with reality and actual recent history (much of which he was years ahead of the curve in reporting on). Near as I can tell, his various autopsies of the economic freefall of the United States have been largely on point and water tight (not to mention backed up by fairly hard data) for the better part of over 15 years now.

But by all means, if you've got something that completely blows the doors off of something he's said on the issue (apart from simply "Pffft, he's just a journalist, what would HE know about anything?"), you're more than welcome to share it with the rest of the class.

This is a persistent myth and an example of skewed priorities. The average student loan debt is about $25,000, including loans taken out for living expenses and for private schools, whereas the majority of public university students in somewhere like California pay zero tuition.

This is unbelievably disingenuous, bordering on slimy. Fully Tuition Free Public Universities are INCREDIBLY rare and uncommon across most of North America. You HAVE to be smart enough to know and understand this, as making them more widespread and accessible among average Americans is among one of the hottest political debates going on in this country at the moment.

The idea that most average, low-income people who want a college education across the entire country are all capable of flying out to the relatively small number of states (only 11 out of 50 last I checked) that offer 100% free enrollment in publicly paid-for colleges is laughable on its face. And that's before even getting into all kinds of stipulations that many of them hold to: such as only allowing free enrollment to state natives, or only having just a two year Associates course free and publicly covered and anything else beyond that (including just a 4 year Bachelor's degree) still costing quite a fair bit in tuition payments.

FAR from everyone in this country are in a position to take advantage of such opportunities. And that's PRECISELY why people, from ALL walks of life, bend themselves over backwards financially so that they can actually get SOME manner of college education. Even going to the most dumpy of Community Colleges can SEVERELY tax most average people's finances, especially if all they have to survive on is some shitty minimum wage job (as a VAST overwhelming majority of Americans these days often tend to).

The "crisis" is entirely the result of
A. the US being way too generous with who it lets go to college (other countries like Germany generally have heavy barriers to entry to filter out the worst students),
B. a lot of students being idiots who dropped out, got degrees in something useless, blew a bunch of money before paying their debt, or all three,
C. a lot of parents being idiots by refusing to save for their kids' education. With the way financial aid works, literally every student who took out massive loans had parents that had enough income to pay for their schooling.

A) College, or education in general really, like healthcare, isn't a "privilege" only open to an elite few... its a basic fundamental right that should be open to EVERYONE who wants it. There isn't ANYTHING inherent about college that need render it exempt from the same damn public finances we allow for grade school and high school. Obviously I'm not saying that private, Ivy League colleges should be universally free: but public, tuition-free colleges should be something that is WAY more widespread and accessible to ALL Americans across ALL 50 states.

The idea that America is "way too generous" with who it "lets" go to college, or that other places are better because they "filter out" certain people... this type of condescending and repulsive language speaks untold VOLUMES about your worldview. People, ALL people and not just an elite, privileged few, have a fundamental right to a basic and higher education. The idea that these things should be gated off away from "the less-than worthy" is fucking abominable and disgusting. We ALL lose out ultimately by not allowing everyone, across class/income lines, to go to college without bankrupting themselves in the process.

B) You realize what some of the most common reasons for students dropping out of college are, right? And no, it ISN'T because "they're just idiots" like you asininely claim here.

1) The tuitions being too fucking expensive (even for just some run of the mill community college in many cases) to continue to afford, particularly for those who are low-income.

2) Not being able to balance time between the shit minimum wage job they need to survive on with going to classes.

and of course 3) god forbid they become seriously ill, and are further likely unable to financially support their college tuition AND paying off their medical bills (thanks to our ridiculous privatized healthcare system), and have to make the incredibly difficult decision between one or the other.

Reason number 3 by the way: I can speak to that one from personal, first-hand experience. Because of it, because I was unlucky enough to contract a serious, debilitating muscle/nerve disease, I was left in financial ruins from medical expenses, and thus I was never able to complete my college education even to this very day.

Guess what I was minoring in at the time I was going by the way? Economics.

And situations like mine are the FARTHEST thing from unique or uncommon in this country.

But yes, by all means, do continue to play "blame the victim" with people who have had their entire lives legitimately destroyed over this shit. Something shitty happens to someone that's SO BAD, it makes them have to jeopardize their entire future by dropping out of college... clearly it MUST somehow be aaaaaaaall their own damn fault because they're just, in your words, "idiots". Because going to college is such a cavalier, easy afterthought of a thing to do for the VAST overwhelming majority of Americans that most of them will just drop out on a whim over something trivial.

I feel like I need a shower after reading this disgusting puke. And the mods are more than free to strike me for breaking the "keep everything Shonen" rule here: I could give a fuck less in cases like this.

C) Yes, OBVIOUSLY the main, universal reason for why many parents don't save up for their kids' college education is because "they're just idiots". What kind of detached sociopath thinks like this?

Many parents, particularly in low-income families, have to STRUGGLE just to survive every day. Do you know what most families in poverty-stricken areas of this country GO THROUGH every day just to keep a roof over their heads and have food on the table every week? I do, because I grew up in one my entire childhood, as did pretty much the vast majority of my friends growing up. I was lucky enough to make it out of there by my teens: not all of the people I knew were quite as lucky. Not even most of them.

The idea that "well they're just idiots" for not saving money for college for their kids is out of touch, disconnected ignorance and idiocy of the highest possible fucking order, and you should be embarrassed and ashamed for spewing that kind of vile toxic sewage. And trust me: there's nothing even REMOTELY "fake" about my outrage here. What you're saying in this post is utterly reprehensible and indicative of what's wrong and what's poisonous about much of the "fuck you, I've got mine" mentality in this country.

What you're putting forth here, the notion that the ENTIRE student loan debt crisis is SOLELY comprised of upper middle class families who wildly overspent on some Ivy League education in some kind of Liberal Arts major for their pampered offspring, is WILDLY out of fucking touch with the reality of MILLIONS and frankly reeks of condescending, self-absorbed arrogance.

If ANYTHING about this conversation is a "persistent myth" its this line of smug-ass bullshit right here. That's not even to say that those sorts of people don't exist in SOME capacity obviously, nor that they're not a contributing factor to the debt crisis: but painting the crisis as if its ALL ENTIRELY on them is just plain moronic in the extreme.

Never mind the fact that, even among older and successful professionals well into their 60s, many folks are STILL paying off college student loans from decades and decades ago, even as they close in on retirement age and as THEIR kids rack up their OWN student loan debts in the process; in no small part thanks to interest rates constantly inflating over time.

What it basically is is the modern day equivalent of indentured servitude: except at least indentured servitude in the colonial-era actually ENDED for someone after a fixed period of time. This shit keeps people working their asses off to the bone in order to pay off debt (for something as simple as daring to want to have a halfway decent education) for literally almost their entire lives.

This whole situation is TOTALLY untenable, and is a ticking time bomb of a MASSIVE crash just WAITING to happen sooner or later down the line.

But no, I'm sure this is all just a whole lot of nothing, and the over 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS in student loan debt that this country has currently racked up is ALL totally just because some silly, stupid parents weren't smart enough to just sock away all those hundreds of thousands of dollars that were just LYING AROUND THE HOUSE (who among us hasn't made THAT mistake before, amirite?), and their kids were just some over-privileged spoiled brats who pissed away their tuition money on weed or classes for Basket Weaving and learning to play the sitar.

Simply unreal the levels of detached ignorance in all these ridiculous assertions.

The average graduate makes $50,000 out the door and $75,000 mid-career (assuming you're just the average and aren't making six figures by then due to getting a degree in something useful, like, say... Economics). Paying off such a debt, which usually has an interest rate either just above or below the rate of inflation, is utterly trivial.

Again... you're revealing yourself to be unbelievably, gob-smackingly detached from the struggles of ordinary people.

Apart from economics, the above article is talking about employment opportunities predominantly for students majoring in STEM fields: Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math. While these are ALL excellent, noble fields of study that are hugely important... they're not for EVERYONE. Not EVERYONE can be or even wants to be a Neuro Professor or Computer Analyst or Mathematician or Stock Broker, and so on.

Just as there exist an immensely vast array of talents and skillsets that many different kinds of people excel at, so to were there once an INSANELY wide and broad array of other professional fields that we USED to have and actively encourage in this country, but don't anymore thanks to things like outsourcing and corporate consolidation, among other factors.

We've been long continuing to narrow and shrink the available avenues for success in the professional, industrialized world: seemingly mainly for the benefit largely of people with aptitudes for these increasingly narrowing fields, many of whom it seems suspiciously often tend to be wealthy Ivy Leaguers and trust fund babies who can afford the ridiculous small fortunes it costs to become sufficiently educated for these fields (lets not forget that very often, not always but often enough, employers in many of these fields will discriminate based on how "prestigious" of a college a person went to, rather judge mainly by their actual merit of talent and skill).

Not everyone is a budding Scientist or Mathematician or Computer Technician. Some people are builders, or craftsmen, or god forbid maybe even artists. Or some people are just plain old hard manual workers and that's where they most excel at: guess which of these realms of profession we seem to have a perpetual habit of fucking over the most across the generations?

The point is, that article you linked to applies to an INCREDIBLY narrow array of ridiculously upscale and privileged people, most of whom are ANYTHING but the average majority of Americans who have to put themselves through utter hell and misery daily just to make ends barely meet. Presenting information like this as if opportunities like this are in any way applicable to even HALF the people in this country is either cringingly naive or unabashedly full of shit.

And speaking of that article: it comes courtesy of Money (Time Magazine's financial outlet). Talk about a business journalism outlet that's in NO way heavily written for total, unabashed yuppies and is TOTALLY plugged in and connected to the day to day realities of the average American. What with hard-hitting financial articles like "63% of Rich Kids Say They Will Rely on Their Inheritance for Retirement" - which in the article is painted in UNIRONIC SYMPATHY for them I should add - and "How These 8 Successful Executives Make Their Commutes More Productive". Truly finger-on-the-pulse of what's most financially concerning to the everyday struggles of regular people.

Christ, Money: and you question MY sources for economic information? You may as well have thrown me an article from Fortune that talks about how "CEOs Are Really Optimistic About the Economy" in 2017 because Trump wants to cut their taxes (and has since then). Because THAT'S always been historically healthy for the economy and the well being of the lower and middle class.

Cool, thanks for outing yourself as the horseshoe equivalent of a climate change denier. Saves me from having to engage an obviously crazy person.

The economic equivalent of a climate change denier is someone who thinks that doubling down on things like supply-side economics, banking deregulation, and boom/bust market bubbles (things that have been tried COUNTLESS TIMES across over a hundred years and counting now, and have been continually proven to be utterly full of shit and immensely corrosive to regular people's lives) is the financial solution to all of our current ills, as opposed to the root cause of them.

Or for that matter, one who engages in gross victim-blaming by thinking that the root cause for the student loan debt crisis lies squarely upon the shoulders of the lowly peasants and the serfs who DARE think themselves "worthy" and "privileged" enough of a higher education and who break their backs trying to work off their ridiculous tuition fees that comes as a cost of their desperate grasp for SOMETHING even VAGUELY resembling a brighter future, as opposed to a higher education system that's been ruthlessly fucked by rampant privatization and profit motives (a problem that may just get worse and trickle its way down to the elementary and high school levels if a scumbag heiress twit of the "let them eat cake" variety like Betsy DeVos gets her way as Trump's U.S. Secretary of Education).

One of the more famous definitions of "crazy", last I checked, is "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results". Which is, economically, what the United States has basically been doing, across both Republican AND Democratic administrations alike, throughout the past 30 to 50-ish years now by continuing to indulge in this Feudalistic nonsense that's done little except benefit an absurdly narrow few while napalming the lives of the VAST overwhelming majority.

The key difference between our views on this seems to be that I think that there should be SOME viable, universal option for college that's freely available to anyone and everyone without financially ruining them, because everyone across the entire spectrum deserves the basic human dignity to have the full breadth of education in America made easily possible for them to engage in.

Whereas you (based on your earlier statements at least) seem to indicate that you think that college is something to be cordoned off and doled out selectively and only to those who are worthy, that we have to "filter out" the undesirables because some people are apparently too innately "stupid" to deserve a chance at an education, and that anyone who is innately unworthy of a college education, but seeks it out anyway, somehow "deserves" whatever catastrophic financial consequences befall them because they were enough of an "idiot" to think that their dreams were something that was worth pursuing.

I'll let people here decide who it is between us that's the crazy one.

[VegettoEX]

We're definitely beyond the scope of any real relation to Toriyama and Dragon Ball at this point - locking things up until/if/when we know more about his situation specifically.