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Greed Over People

As a former Democrat, now independent, who once worked for Democrats in the state House, Democrats are just as awful.

At least im not the only independent person who sees both sides fucking suck

Got a link for the full list?

I posted it upthread.

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The unemployment rate might have ticked down, but everything else is still the same.

I don't understand the downvotes. Pennsylvania isn't losing population because it's so fabulous that people can't stand it; it's losing population because it's turning into more of a polluted shithole.

THe only reason the population decline isn't more severe is because retirees are moving to W. PA to avail themselves of the low cost of living, abundant healthcare and no state tax on retirement income.

https://triblive.com/local/regional/western-pennsylvania-population-continues-to-trickle-downward/

Two sides of the same coin, they’ll just keep bouncing off one another to stay in power yet will not change a thing unless absolutely necessary or if it directly benefits them

Yep. In Congress, it's just good cop, bad cop.

The overpaid Pennsylvania Legislature is just corrupt AF.

Neither of them offer solutions to the problems they caused, or at least contributed to making worse

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what a Republican controlled legislature has gotten for us. Looks like not much to me.

Wrong. This is outdated. We have a rainy day fund of $5B.

https://www.abc27.com/local-news/pennsylvanias-rainy-day-fund-reaches-record-high/amp/

They both suck, but only one party is actively trying to make things worse for everyone…I’ll give you a hint. It begins with an R.

Get that biased shit outta here

Yeah that’s true the Democrats did attempt that coup to overthrow democracy….oh wait no that was the republicans

Oooh. Big bucks. The most recent PA budget was $44 billion, and the Legislature and the governor continue to lower the corporate tax rate. We'll blow through that $5 billion pretty quickly.

Now do pensions. And no, Act 5 0f 2017 isn't pension reform; it's just more screwing over of the young.

Republicans: "We're gonna build a Christo-fascist police state"
Democrats: "We don't want that..."

Centrist: bOtH sIdEs bAd!!!!!111!!111

Not even close to being true

Also i could just flip the opposite

Democrats: "We wanna take your rights and force you to rely on the government while we take your money"

See how this proves nothing?

Omg Democrats aren't going to let you keep a tactical nuke in your basement. They are so evil /s

Funny, the main reason I’m in PA is for jobs.

Bold of you to assume i was talking about the second amendment ONLY, besides it is a right to keep and bear weapons to fight tyranny

The democrats show favoratism towards censorship, restricting the first amendment,

They heavily favor passing laws in violation of the tenth amendment, (roe v wade as an example)

While republicans have shown support for violation of the 9th amendment, the 4th amendment, and the religious portion of the first amendment

Why post something from 4 years ago?

https://www.wesa.fm/economy-business/2023-01-20/pennsylvania-unemployment-rate-hits-record-low-of-3-9

Lol "I've been called on my bullshit so I'm just gonna move the goalposts." Love it.

Pensions? Ok, how about how Governor Shapiro wants to dramatically cut costs by switching from expensive money managers to high performing index funds?

Oh wait, I forgot he's a Democrat and they can't do anything right, according to you.

But hey, I'm sure a genius like you has a bunch of great solutions to honor people's pension obligations that they worked for as the population ages and the state has to pay out, so I'm all ears!

Pay attention: I'm a former Democrat who worked for Democrats in the State House.

They're garbage.

And it's definitely a mystery as to how the Legislature & governor are going to wring additional taxes out of people working low wage jobs (PA's minimum wage is STILL $7.25/hr), struggling to breathe where air quality is horrible, and are FREE caregivers to their elderly relatives.

I won't be here, so they won't get any money out of me.

Cool. Bye!

OK:

Pennsylvania 2022 unemployment rate: 3.9%

Pension funded ratio (2019): 58.0%

1 year GDP growth: 4.4%

Poverty rate: 12.2%

Moody's credit rating: Aa3 (AAA is the best)

---

It's barely an improvement

tHe LiBeRaL mEdiA iS mAkiNg PeNnSILvAniA lOoK bAd.

PA would be be so amazing without republicans.

30 states are lower.

https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

I anticipate I won't be the only one in the outflow from Pennsylvania.

Democrats have controlled the executive and judicial branches of PA’s government for years too.

Find a new slant.

Some of what is posted above is demonstrably false.

"I'm a former Democrat" who probably lost an election and is now lashing out in anger. Or, more likely, a member of the GQP party who has a problem telling the truth.

Outflow (among sewer operators) = shit from the cesspool.

Did you miss out on that promotion? Did that hot new intern turn you down? Or, is your name Dylan?

I criticized Rendell earlier, so may as well again. At the very least, the rainy day fund was liquidated during his term.

He can't take credit for much else on that list, but that was him. Why it hasn't been replenished by now is another question altogether.

Yeah let's blame the Dems for the minimum wage is brain dead.

Yeah, but at least they didn't sue themselves after writing a mail-in-voter expansion law like PA Republicans did. In the race to the bottom one side still leads.

Yeah we could be more like California. That would be sick…

I don’t get it. People die in every state. Based on experience, most of those passages are without a will. With no will, usually the state comes out a winner. And in PA, the state is literally the first in line to get a slice of the pie after death. That must be worth billions. I know my own Aunt passed with thousands in a bank (in TX). But no will, and no easy way to break it out amongst an array of cousins. I figure every state should be making out like a bandit, while keeping it off the radar.

I've heard that bill will be filed, and it will come out of committee for full house vote this session. Will be interesting to see what Senate does then.

The liberals run the cites and the conservatives run the fields. They argue over whats best for each area and never come to a conclusion, pa is hell.

Extremely profitable with crazy income and awesome weather?

Everyone is leaving the state. You must have never actually been to California lol.

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39,030,000 pop... down from 39,140,000... in the last year. PA went 13,010,000 down to 12,970,000

So PA lost more percentage in the last year then California... 110k vs 40k, but they have triple the pop.

Percentage doesn’t really matter at all in this case. This is not counting the exodus of massive commercial businesses due to horrible tax law. Or the drug/homelessness issue and people shitting on the streets.

Have you been to Philly lately?

That Entity R sucks doesn't mean that Entity D does NOT suck.

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Yep. It’s also a dump. Years and years of democrat rule lead most major cities into that descent.

as opposed to our state in general... are you really sure this is an argument you want to be having when you are trying to defend PA?

>Democrats: "We wanna take your rights and force you to rely on the government while we take your money"

I still loathe the lazy Dems. That being said, every time I propose cutting HEAVILY taxpayer-subsidized Medicare and veteran benefits, people lose their shit.

Nobody's forced to sign up for any government program, btw.

And to keep yourself out of prison for sedition, the 2A is intended for tyranny by ANOTHER government, not your own. Take up arms against your own government and you're headed for pokey.

Technically it is for both, but the cia and fbi would prefer it if people kept thinking that it wasnt

The healthcare system is fucked, but i cant really see a solution that benefits both the system and the people. As someone who doesnt have health insurance i know i cannot afford going to the hospital for anything

But at the same time, taxes are bad enough as it is, i dont wanna pay more

Its not even been a day and this comment aged so poorly, the atf just announced that pistol braces are a felony to own. Not only do they not have the authority to decide that but pistol braces are designed so that disabled people who cannot properly stabilize a pistol or rifle style pistol can safely fire it

The atf just made it a felony to properly and safely use pistols because your disabled.

I’m not trying to defend PA. What I’m trying to say is that we absolutely don’t need more democrats, which both of the states you’ve mentioned have had in power for many many years.

Good call, lets go with the Republican leadership that has been in control of PA for 40 years... they are doing amazing...

I recently moved here but still work 100% remote for my aerospace employer in Texas. My take is that Pennsylvania could seriously use an injection of Aerospace and space jobs. Maybe there is something that can be done at the state level? Not sure, but the state could attract a lot of talent if they took the initiative. I'd jump onboard any effort to make that happen.

my air is pretty good, no complaints here

Tom wolf, Josh Shapiro, Larry fetterman. Ed rendell. What are you talking about…?

They “own the libs.” It makes conservatives feel good. It’s all about feelings with them.

Whenever I heard someone say businesses will flee because of taxes it drives me nuts. What do you want to let them keep holding state and local government hostage over taxes all the time? Too many times we’ve seen I’m guessing being near where interstate 80 and 81 intersects plays some part but where I live there are plenty of jobs. They are just shitty ones where they work people half to death for a starvation wage. $15-16/hr wasn’t even that great 10 years ago let alone today. Nobody is “owed” cheap labor. Too many times these places come in and demand all these concessions and incentives promising the moon and stars that never materialize with zero accountability. I’ve personally seen it in my area at least 5 or 6 times over the past 10 years or so. Amazon being the worst offender in this.

It has nothing to do with democrats man, please. This is a nationwide issue that goes far deeper than blue team or red team. These are our own damn people suffering like that. Within the past week I read 2 or 3 articles coming out of Utah talking on how bad the homelessness problem is there that they keep finding dead bodies frozen in the snow. This is unacceptable for supposedly the greatest country ever. We all should be hanging our heads in shame over this homelessness issue.

There’s 3.3 billion in the rainy day fund instead of 200k like when that was initially posted. And the unemployment rate has moved to match the federal level. They’ve also changed some of the tax law to help attract bigger companies to PA with bi-partisan legislation prior to COVID. Keep voting for politicians based on their platform and keep an eye out for people that say they want to address these issues, we got work to do but it’s on us to play our part and elect people to govern well too.

Yeah kind of what I thought...

The PA Congress3 that actually makes laws has been republican controlled with like 2 exceptions since 1980.

I don't really care if it drives you nuts lol... It's a fact. Look at how many have left California in the last 5 years.

You'd have to convince the Republican legislature to not strip education funding fifteen years ago

You're still arguing the difference between a shit sandwich and a giant douche.

I'd rather Democrats to not suck, instead of just skating by on being slightly less suck.

Though here we'd have better empirical data if Rs didn't control things for the past 30 years.

This must be why for most of my career I had to commute to NJ for work

>They’ve also changed some of the tax law to help attract bigger companies to PA with bi-partisan legislation prior to COVID.

Yeah, they're lowering the corporate tax rate which means the tax burden gets shifted to working Pennsylvanians, because retirees pay no state income tax.

And that rainy day fund won't last long.

A huge part of PA is in BLS's "appalachian" region, a long under-performing part of the country. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/appalachian-employment-lagged-rest-of-united-states-from-2001-to-2021.htm

The information is in regard to each state's financial situation. That a company may have jobs in New Jersey doesn't mean the state isn't financially strapped.

Yeah, but you could import people. Texas imports a lot of aerospace talent from elsewhere.

Ok, sure. That's a possibility.

Now, there are other issues. PA isn't in a position to launch rockets. There's a reason it's all done in FL and TX, and that's not taxes, it's geography.

Then there's the issue where PA doesn't have the same sort of relationship with the military.

You'd need to change a huge amount of the culture. Really, it'd be better to heavily invest in tech, possibly semiconductor manufacturing, and software. There are plenty of places ripe for it.

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Like what?

Like, for starters, that PA has no rainy day fund.

They've done one thing right. By doing such a poor job running the state, they've made people not want to live here, thus lowering rent prices so I can afford to live here 🙅🏻‍♂️

Just wish I had something to vote for than something I'm voting against, for once

And how do those numbers compare across the country?

Texas wasn't a place where launches occurred until SpaceX set up their Starbase in Brownsville. Thiokol corporation made the Shuttle booster rockets in Utah, where no launches occur. As a matter of fact, Cambridge, MA was under consideration to be the location for Mission Control before Houston. There are a number of aerospace companies in Maryland, which doesn't have any launch facilities either. I've seen interesting aerospace companies pop up in places that I would never have expected. Hermeus Aerospace comes to mind - they are in Georgia. Space Tango is in North Carolina. There is absolutely no reason why Pennsylvania couldn't have a robust aerospace industry. It has good universities and pretty good proximity to other good schools out of state. It's much more a matter of wanting it. I see the potential.

The rainy day fund is $5 billion now; a record high. Thanks Governor Wolf!

https://www.abc27.com/local-news/pennsylvanias-rainy-day-fund-reaches-record-high/amp/