5-point guide to the "fiscal cliff"

Post Reply New Topic

The Republicans and the Tea Party do not want a one party system auntblabby, they want to undo a lot of the destructive policies we've seen emerge in the last few years, they don't want to wipe out the Democrat Party, they never have.

You need to learn that a lot of what you were taught, your indoctrinated hate of Republicans was simply brainwashing. Republicans don't hate minorities, they don't hate poor people, nor are they puppets of the rich; they never have been. The Republican Party actually has no real history of racism (that can actually be traced back to a lie that the American People have been fed for the past few decades.

The Republicans (particularly the Tea Party elements) simply think government is not the answer to every problem (and quite often is the problem), and truth of the matter is the Republicans are right. Fact of the matter is that a lot of the entitlement programs are simply making people dependent and beholden to government, they are not meant to help people learn to improve their own lives.

The reason why religious charities tend to do better at helping people in poverty, helping people in disasters, etc. is the following:
1. Private donations that were completely voluntary (people are spending their own money to help, not someone else's money.
2. They provide a face for the people that need help, and those people see that the people giving their time and resources to help and thus with that added "putting a face on the help" effect, it gives people an incentive to get to where they don't need the charity anymore. Whereas in the case of government, people get more and more dependent on it and feel entitled to it.

When it comes to racism, Republicans have never been for racist ideologies, when a certain racist (David Duke) "joined the party" Republicans actually actively sabotaged his campaign, racism has never been tolerated. Contrary to popular belief, the "welfare queen" comments that Reagan is often tied to, was actually white, the garbage about him bashing minorities is a lie that has been perpetuated by the Democrats and mainstream media, and I wish most Republicans would have the guts to call them out on it. The thing is, Republicans don't believe you can legislate racism away, and you can actually start practicing racism in another fashion through said legislation. If someone kills someone else out of malice, I'm sorry that is murder, I don't care whether it was over money, race hate, etc., murder is murder, you don't need arbitrary hate crime laws in addition to current ones.

Concerning illegal immigration, Republicans don't really care what color the person's skin is, it has to do with the fact they broke the law, if you want to argue the immigration system needs to be fixed, fine; but that doesn't change the fact people broke the law. I don't care if they illegally migrated here from England, Japan, Spain, or Mexico; they broke the law. Now if we want to talk about people that were brought here as children, fine, but the Feds need to demonstrate that they are going to enforce our national sovereignty and keep people from entering the country illegally.

I don't hate anyone here, I never have, nor do I bash people behind their backs. I'm intensely frustrated with people here, but I don't hate anyone here, I just wish people would wise up, but then I also understand how tough it is for people on the spectrum myself included to recognize when they are wrong about something, which is why I do a lot of research before I make an opinion on something. Another thing is that I'm a big history buff, and a pay a lot of attention to politics, a lot closer attention than people here would like to believe.

The math the Democrats are using quite frankly simply doesn't add up, and no amount of taxing the rich will change that. The insane increase of regulations is causing massive damage to the economy (that includes Obamacare which many of you support), you were taught that businessmen are evil (well some are, but many are not), that was actually a form of brainwashing so you'd react emotionally rather than using logic and thinking things through rationally.

Businesses need a playing field where the ground rules aren't changing every proverbial five minutes, they like to have budgets planned out for at least 6 months to a year or more in advance, this is so they can plan things out and not get blindsided by something and end up going out of business. When the ground rules keep changing, then businesses can't plan ahead, which means they end up under increasing pressure to simply shut down the business and walk away, it's not business people being mean, it is simply the result of government behaving badly.

Another thing people here need to understand: "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"

charity doesn't enable the vast majority of the working class to afford health care. and it never has.

The politicians are going to milk this for media attention for as long as possible, make it out to be a great drama, and then finish it up before Christmas break. It happens all the time.

Speaking of entitlements: AARP (The American Association of Retired Persons) is asking its members to contact their congress-people not to damage Social Security and Medicare. There seems to be a distinct possibility that the eligibility age for Medicare will be raised to 67, and that the retirement age will be raised to 70. The Repugs are absolutely drooling for this.

I certainly agree with you, Inuyasha, that neither the Republicans, nor the Tea Party want to see the destruction of the Democratic Party. Auntblabby's hyperbole is no more accurate than the hyperbole I have seen from the right.

But I don't agree that charities do better at helping people in poverty--for a few reasons.

First, voluntary donations tend to fall off in hard economic times--which is precisely the time that charities are called upon by people in need in greater numbers and with greater needs. As for "putting a face on it," I suggest to you that this actually creates a greater incentive to dependency. Bureaucracy is faceless and intimidating, whereas private charity tends to be welcoming. Furthermore, bureaucracy is unforgiving of oversight. If you forget to file your cards this week, then there is no EI cheque for you next week. Period.

Add to that the fact that charities do not have universal reach--they can place themselves where the need is greatest--but they cannot place themselves everywhere where need exists. Government has the resources to aggregate its programs in small centres. If government is obliged to erect a post office, or a motor vehicle licensing office in a small town, it can also deliver its other programs through there.

As far as minorities are concerned, Reagan will still have to answer for his active indifference to the onset of AIDS. Even his most fervent supporters cannot do better than to describe his response as "halting and ineffective." Reagan's own communications director describe AIDS as "nature's revenge on gay men." Reagan did not address the epidemic until the middle of 1987--having cut out his own Surgeon General from all internal discussions regarding the government's response to AIDS during the first five years of the epidemic. Was he a racist? No, I don't think so. Did he knowingly allow tens of thousands of gay men to die while his Administration did nothing? I think he did.

As for illegal immigration, let's be clear--the American economy could not survive without the influx of cheap labour. Many American cities would cease to function without the economic activity that illegal entrants provide. Republicans know this just as well as Democrats do--but they know that their base doesn't want to hear it. So they talk long and loud about obeying the law, and then make damn sure that nothing gets done about it. One of the few areas where Bush Jr. and I would have clearly agreed on policy is normalizing the status of illegal entrants.

Overall, I suggest that you need to look in a mirror. While you acknowledge how tough it is for people to recognize when they are wrong, you still maintain that at the end of your research, you have arrived at absolute truth. Your worldview allows for no nuance and no exceptions. You parrot the party line uncritically. Political and economic policy regulates an organic entity. Economies do not behave according to fixed rules, and there will always be outliers and exceptions. And so policy must be understood always to be imperfect. My frustration with you does not lie in your politics per se, but rather in your unwillingness to acknowledge the imperfections in the policies that you espouse.

I quite agree that tax is not the only answer to the fiscal policy mess that you are in. But it must be acknowledged as part of the answer. Individuals in your country are vastly undertaxed in comparison with the rest of the OECD, and your corporations are--at least on paper--overtaxed. Simplification of the tax code is a laudable goal, but if a line is drawn in the sand over levels of personal taxation, you will be doomed to failure. You might not like the Democrats' math--but the Republicans' math is surely no better.

The longer that partisans demonize their opponents, the more difficult it becomes for concensus decisions to be found. And you desperately need concensus. You need both parties to agree on some common solutions, and0--if need be--to drag their supporters kicking and screamining into compromise. So long as your politics will not admit of compromise, you are part of the problem--not a solution.

I'm actually surprised you would say something like that...



That is a fair point, except the problem here is the government is responsible for the current hard economic times. The runaway regulations, tax increases, etc. basically guarentee the economic condition of the country will continue to deteriorate. For a short term disaster, you have a fair point, but for something like what is happening right now, I'm fairly certain at this point that this government dependency was an intended result.[/quote]



Government can't place themselves everywhere need exists either, and I would also point out that charities tend to do better at managing their resources better so there is usually substancially less waste, fraud, and abuse. I would also submit that charities would probably have more resources at their disposal if not for Government going hog wild on taxing and spending to wreck the economy.



Very little was known about AIDs during the 1980s, I also would point out that someone practicing a homosexual lifestyle is a chosen behavior, not a racial minority. The fact that the spread of AIDs could actually and still can be easily curtailed if people were more responsible concerning their behavior, is rather blatently obvious.

Fact of the matter is, AIDs could easily be essentially irradicated in the United States in a few decades tops, with or without a cure for the disease.

1. Everyone gets tested so they know whether or not they have the HIV virus.
2. Be responsible when it comes to your sexual behavior.

HIV is not like the common cold, it can't be spread via the air, nor can it spread by touching an infected individual's skin.

The really sad cases of people being infected are cases like Ryan White, whom got it from a tainted blood transfusion.



Probably fewer cities would suffer than you think, plus it would also allow Americans that can't find a job currently, find one. There are a lot of Americans that are currently very wealthy that started off in rather low-end jobs.



visagrunt, believe it or not I actually read through a lot of people's arguments which were contrary to my own opinions. One of the advantages of having a parent that was a speech pathologist and even though I wasn't diagnosed as being on the spectrum until college, I still got a lot of the intervention (concerning things like figures of speech, words having multiple meanings, ques to look for in body language, etc.), unlike some others here, you have in fact provided some very good arguments in the past, but there was a key flaw that I apparently have been unable to get you to recognize.

Your key problem is you often are using assumptions that are not factually correct and sources that are extremely biased at best, furthermore in the case of recent years; as anyone whom lives within a 150 mile radius from Chicago and actually pays attention can tell you that Chicago is about the most corrupt city in the United States. I don't trust politicians in general, but Chicago Politicians (primarily Democrats in this case because Democrats are the ones running the Chicago machine as it's called) are far worse.

Am I aware that Fox News has a bias, yes, I take that into account, however I'm also aware of the fact that they are not as biased as you have been led to believe. When Fox News commentators (like Sean Hannity) are being compared to news broadcasters on other channels to claim Fox News is more biased; then it starts becoming fairly obvious from my standpoint that the studies bashing Fox News are seriously flawed.

Furthermore, Fox News is about the only conservative media source that is on television in the United States, they are under constant scrutiny because the other media outlets want them taken off the air. Heck, there have been left wing groups that have actually declared war on Fox News (mediamatters and moveon.org for example).

Finally, Fox News is about the only network that is seriously critical of the current President and Democrats. All the other networks are trying to serve as Obama's press secretaries, and haven't been trying to get to the bottom of things like Fast & Furious, Benghazi, etc., I think it is very dangerous when we have a Press Corp that is trying to parrot Propaganda from a sitting administration rather than trying to get to the bottom of things and uncover the truth. Contrary to what many people here believe, Fox News was also critical of George W. Bush, and they have been critical of Republicans more often than you'd think.



Depends on the issue visagrunt.



If that were the case, I would have been supporting Mitt Romney wholeheartedly, I simply saw him as not nearly as bad as Obama. I still didn't like Romney, and thought he was a horrible candidate and I didn't agree with him on many issues. I think a better case could be made concerning quite a few people here (you included) of parroting leftist party lines uncritically far more than me concerning Conservatism.



Laws should not be ignored whenever a President simply feels like it, I understand that regulations sometimes need to change, but ignoring bankruptcy law to steal from Teachers' Retirement Funds (such as the state of Indiana) in order to bail out the unions in General Motors and Chrysler. I recognize that sometimes rules and regulations need to change, but it shouldn't be done on whims, in a blind panic, or emotional response; changes to regulations need to be carefully thought through, and the process needs to be open and transparent.



There is another factor to this that you are unaware of (which is again why I say you are using faulty assumptions), there have been several incidents in the past where Democrats gave the promise that if Republicans went along with a tax increase, there would be cuts in the budget later on. The Republicans took the Democrats at their word, and the spending cuts not only never materialized, it actually increased.

The Republicans should not agree to any tax increases until the Democrats put through spending cuts first, because they've demonstrated before that they can't be taken at their word. There is an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."



If you look at whom is demonizing whom, the Democrats are far more guilty of this than the Republicans. Also Obama's "proposal" included giving him a credit card with an unlimited spending limit (which is essentially what doing away with the debt ceiling means), and further increases in spending coupled with tax hikes. It has been rather blatently obvious that one party is actually being far more partisan than the other and if you had been getting information from news sources that weren't trying to play: "pin the blame on the Republicans," and actually giving a remotely honest account of what was going on, you'd know that.

I strive to be, if nothing else, fair in my commentary.



Interesting points. But whether government is responsible for the current hard times, or whether it is down to external factors (and I take the view that there is plenty of blame to go around), the needs of the poor must still be met, and government is the only entity that is adequately equipped to respond to those needs.

There may be merit in coopting private agencies to delivery government programs, and that might prove a fertile middle ground--getting the government out of the business of direct service delivery whether other agencies can do it better, but leaving government in charge of defining universality of access and the substance of program supports. And, of course, being available as the delivery agent of last resort.



I am not at all sure that either of those statements is accurate. Every citizen has a relationship to government on some level. How do we post a letter without a post office? How do we get a driving license or register a vehicle without a motor vehicle licensing office? The coal face of government relationship to citizens is at the municipal level, and there is absolutely no reason that municipal establishments cannot provide the facilities for the necessary functions of the senior levels of government.



I have written, deleted, rewritten, edited and deleted several responses to this. Finally, I have concluded that the best thing for me to say is that I am extremely offended by that passage.

Rather than inflaming matters, can I suggest that we exchange pm's about my reasons?



Fewer? I'm not sure that damage to any city is something that the United States can afford right now.

But let us suppose that you could take away the illegals working in the service industries in the cities. How many of the jobs they perform are unnecessary? Precious few, it seems to me. Dishes need to be washed, cabs need to be driven, and day labourers are needed in all manner of places. So yes, those tasks would still be there. But where are these unemployed Americans going to come from? The locations that illegals are working are also the places where labour is scarce. So are these unemployed Americans going to work for less than minimum wage? Where are they going to live? Are they going to be content to hotbunk in tenement apartments?

Is there one--let alone 10 million--unemployed American who would accept the wages, working conditions and living conditions of the typical urban illegal?



You claim these things, but nothing in what you post demonstrates that any of your claims are true.

I see precious little evidence that you have taken into consideration any opinions other than those that you have gleaned from talking heads. Your research seems to be an excercise in bias confirmation. If I saw you substantively engaging on issues, I would think differently--but your strategy seems to be to man the rhetorical barricades rather than to discuss.

Anyone who asserts in an argument that he can, "completely destroy," an opponent's position is, I suggest, not engaging in critical thinking.



For my part, I don't think that I have ever jumped on the anti-Fox hobbyhorse. I am a firm believer in the marketplace of ideas, and I think that organs like Fox News play an important role in that marketplace. I don't like their editorial stance, but you won't find me calling for them to be taken off the air.



But it shouldn't. There should always be room for doubt and alternative points of view.



You are absolutely right. I withdraw that remark.

And when have I ever parrotted anybody's party line?!? I like to believe that I am an equal opportunity rationalist--though I certainly stand to be corrected if I am deceiving myself.

Now, that's not to say that I don't have very firmly held beliefs. But there is a difference between being, for example, a firm supporter of same-sex marriage or unrestricted access to abortion before 20 weeks gestational age and being unwilling to recognize that opposing points of view have merit.



I don't disagree with any of those statements, but I am unclear about how that is relevant to the question of your absolutism in your political beliefs.



The fact that Democrats and Republicans have time and again broken their word is a fact of political life. It happens up here with our political parties, too. No one should ever make a deal for future consideration. It's a mug's game in business, and all the moreso in politics. And, to be sure, when the Republicans took the Democrats at their word, they knew full well that they were accepting an empty promise which they would use for political gain now and in the future. And the Democrats have, and will continue to do exactly the same.

None of which changes the simple fact that no one can fix your fiscal policy gap on the expenditure side alone. It cannot be done. Period. To close the gap on the expenditure side will unceremoniously rip 10% out of the economy at a stroke--a disaster from which you (and we) will take a decade and a half to recover. Even the "fiscal cliff" represents a 5% contraction--which is a disaster of epic proportions. Any clear minded analyst knows two things:

1) The solution cannot be instantaneous. Your economy is no robust enough to handle it.
2) The solution cannot be exclusively on the expenditure side.

Now, that still leaves a huge range of options, particularly regarding the size of the governments role in the economy over time. But none of the public discourse is looking at the twenty year horizon. And I would be astonished if anyone on the political side of the discussion is looking beyond November 2014. But on the government side of the table you have a large number of bright, professional and dedicated people in the Treasury Department who can do the math, and you can be sure that they are doing the 25 year outlook.



No--it is not blatently obvious. What is obvious to this outside observer is that neither party is making a publice demonstration of an interest in reaching a concensus solution, and that both are busily engaged in the theatre of political posturing. And frankly, who cares who is more blameworthy? The fact of the matter is that both sides have to stop. You are busy scoring political points off the Democrats while you slide ever closer to fiscal disaster.

At what point will you start using the brain that you obviously have for constructive purposes? Partisan sniping is a waste of your talents. But if that's how you choose to waste them, then nothing that I can say will stop you.

I've known it all along. We're headed for another Great Depression. Obama doesn't care.

You generally aren't as fair as you think you are, but you are a lot better than many other people here, I will acknowledge that.



If what I suspect is correct though, this government assistance isn't designed to help people anymore, it is designed to actually harm people, by making them dependent on government. The objective of any program designed to help people in need should be to help them get back on their feet so they no longer need the assistence. It should not be designed to make people dependent on whatever table scraps the "enlightened few" (politicians) throw to people whom they essentially consider serfs.



Used to be I would agree with that idea, but these past few years have forced me to change my opinion on this. If religious charities accept anything from the government, then it opens themselves up to government trying to take over their charity. I have absolutely no trust in the current Executive Branch; and while the case can be argued that things would be ran more efficiently with far less fraud if private charities were leading the way, I don't think the government can be trusted.



Honestly the US Postal Service is a complete and total disaster at the moment, if I want to send a letter, to be honest I would recommend e-mail. Both Fed Ex and UPS would also do a significantly better job at delivering the mail (if they were actually allowed to deliver it), than the Postal Service.

The Department of Motor Vehicles is State Government, and while there are some states (California, Illinois, and New York) that really have incredibly corrupt state governments, other states are in much better fiscal shape cause their government is significantly more honest. To be quite blunt, Illinois is well known for being corrupt, and to be quite blunt concerning California, they haven't had a decent Governor since Ronald Reagan.



You can send me a pm as to what your reasoning is if you wish. I will point out there were a lot of things that people didn't understand about HIV back in the early 1980s. What I was pointing out is that having sex irresponsibly is primarily how HIV is spread, doesn't matter if someone is interested in the same or opposite sex.

Then we have kids like Ryan White, whom died of AIDs because he got a tainted blood transfusion (Ryan White had hemophilia, which made it so his blood wouldn't clot, the transfusions were an attempt to counter this issue, and he received a tainted transfusion).



There are plenty of people whom have given up looking for work that could fill those jobs, even in those cities.



Depends, are the working conditions and wages within safety standards and the wages at minimum wage or above? If not the business in question has not only been breaking the law by hiring illegals, but also breaking the law by not paying a fair wage.



I've found it is easier for me to present things to someone when I'm talking to them one on one, not when I have several different people all commenting at once. Also I've found it's significantly easier when I'm talking to the person face to face.



visagrunt, the issue is largely that I don't have any trust in much of what you would consider to be the News Media anymore. I still look at what they are saying occasionally, but in all honesty I really don't trust them to tell the truth on anything. This is a conclusion I have reached over time, not from what Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or anyone else says, but from what I myself have observed.

The mainstream media (though biased), were actually decent news sources up until the late 1990s. I actually used to watch MSNBC, I liked listening to Chris Matthews. I first started watching Fox News in 2001, and in all honesty I liked listening to both so I could get more than one viewpoint. In 2003-2004, I noticed an increased anti-Bush bias, okay fine it was an election year. Then we had the Swift Boat ads, which despite the left bashing the ads, I think the ads were perfectly valid criticism of John Kerry. The people in the ads were all Vietnam Vets, there were medal of honor winners, many had served with Senator Kerry, etc. If they were willing to put their reputations on the line to criticize Senator Kerry; then I honestly believe there are some questions that John Kerry seriously needed to answer.

I felt Fox News' coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans was substancially more objective than the other media outlets, because again these were Veterans that had served with Kerry, they were risking their reputations and everything by doing those ads. Regardless of whether or not one believed that these veterans criticisms of Kerry were correct, I think these people should have been respected for having the courage to say something and not hide behind someone else making allegations, using "rumors," etc.

Contrast that with CBS towards the end of the 2004 election, specifically Rathergate, which really made me sit up and take notice. I'm not sure if you remember, but I have a bachelors degree in Computer Graphics Technology. I can tell you for a fact that the memo that Dan Rather and CBS tried to use and tried to continue to say was geniune, was in fact a fraudulent document, in fact it was such a blatent forgery that bloggers were questioning its authenticity within 30 minutes after the broadcast, and rightly so.

Their are numerous indicators as to why this document was a forgery included: variable spaced font, and the particular font in question didn't exist in the time period that this memo was supposedly written, among other reasons. That document came from a modern computer, most likely using Microsoft Word, and lifting a scanned image of Bush's former superior officer's signature from another document and then placed on the word document as an image. If the document had been genuine, a scanned copy of the document would have been an image file, and thus the original font would have been preserved.

In 2006, we had something that I would call reutergate (this scandal also affected BBC, CNN, MSNBC, among others, about the only one that didn't go along with it was Fox News), I think you should do your own investigation of what happened in that, cause I'm not sure if you'd believe me unless you did the research yourself, but this wasn't the final straw (I still watched MSNBC and other networks but found myself watching Fox News more and more).

What really was the last straw for me happened in 2007-2008, where I saw a blatent attempt to cover up Barack Obama's radical associations, his past history, etc. I actually saw left wing sites scrubbing their sites during the 2008 primaries. As soon as Conservative sites unearthed something, the left wing sites would scrub their sites. Most of the left wing media was mute concerning this, and then we had Chris Matthews' infamous shiver comments along with some other shannigans from various networks, and at that point I was fed up.

What has really scared me these past few years is that I've found commentators like Rush Limbaugh (mainly), Glenn Beck (didn't always agree with him on stuff, but he presented too good of a case (despite his immature behavior at times) to dismiss what he said as just some nut raving); to actually be better news sources than most of the news media.

Let's look at what has happened recently. The left wing media (parroting DNC talking points), accusing Senator John McCain of being sexist and racist, do they have any integrity at all anymore, seriously?!?! John McCain chose a woman as his VP pick for starters, which kinda shoots down the sexism argument right off the bat, and then they are accusing him of being racist which is an attack on his family as well (I'm not sure how to word this without using "colorful metaphors" so I'll let you do your own digging or you can pm me for an explanation). Seriously, McCain is upset over what happened in Benghazi, he wants answers as to what happened, who the hell came up with the bogus explanation involving a stupid video that no one had seen, he doesn't care what color or gender Susan Rice is, he wants answers.



Again I have an engineering/technology background, I'm not a liberal arts major, or a public speaker. Again though, I'm better at having face to face chats (with one on one conversations) than arguing with multiple people at the same time over the internet.



Fair enough, again though this is why I like face to face debates with people one on one, rather than over a message board. It's easy to confuse forum members, so if I misdirected comments at you that should have been directed to someone else involved in the debate at the time, the I apologize for you getting caught in the crossfire.



I used to believe that, while I'm willing for people to give their alternative points of view, there are some things that I don't have any doubt about and will not change my position on.



Apology accepted.



visagrunt, you're a lot better than many other people here, but these past few posts are the most objective I've ever seen you be.



I know I'm very opinionated when it comes to abortion, I'm very pro-life (a discussion for another time). My only objection to "same-sex marriage" is the fact they are trying to call it marriage, I know what the idiots said in the Supreme Court, but quite frankly there was probably an easy way to call "same-sex" relationships to be "civil unions" instead of calling it marriage, hell just put down that marriage is a between a man and woman, and "civil union" as similar to marriage but is instead two people of the same gender, and that for what rights a couple in a "civil union" has, have it directed to the entry for "marriage" and saying they have the same rights and responsibilities as a married couple. There is a way to handle it without pissing off most Conservatives and many religious groups in the process. Part of the issue that homosexual groups fail to realize (at least I hope they are failing to realize this), is they are being a little too "in your face," towards people that disagree with them, and in a manner that is most apt to tick people off.



Despite what many people say about the bailouts of the auto industry, the fact of the matter is that it was both ethically wrong, and illegal. It didn't hurt the rich (well maybe a few rich people, but the weren't the biggest victims. Many of the decisions were designed to specifically help the unions at the expense of everyone else, the car dealerships and autoplants closed were all nonunion (Saturn was one of the most successful of GM's subcompanies, and they were eliminated because they were nonunion). Many former teachers and spouses of former teachers (such as my Grandmother) lost an enormous amount of money when Obama broke the law and screwed over the people that should have been at the front of the line. The Indiana Teacher's pension fund lost an enormous amount of money because they were a stakeholder in GM. Last I checked most teachers are not "rich."



It is a lot easier to get a tax increase through congress, than actual spending cuts. Whenever Republicans tried to suggest cuts they get demonized by Democrats and a complicit "news" media.

In all honesty, I think the spending cuts need to happen first, and then we have the talk about a tax increase. Many "rich" people, whom oppose tax increases, oppose them because they believe government will just irresponsibly spend that money on top of what they are already taking in, and thus don't believe taxes should be raised because it only compounds the problem. These same people would actually be willing to pay more if the Federal Government actually started to demonstrate some fiscal responsibility.



I don't recall Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, etc. ever praying for Democrats to be decapitated...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-colem ... teabaggers

If they did, they'd be kicked off the air.

What have fiscal disaster or the economy have to do with Politics?

Politics is the art of getting elected, and supporting whatever it takes to stay elected.

Government has little to do with the economy, and even when top tax rates were 90%, and there were no food stamps and hardly any unemployment, the economy continued.

It was Politics looking for donations that deregulated Banks, Wall Street, and the Mortgage Industry. It was Politics looking for donations that invaded Iraq, or Viet Nam before. Bush was one term before becoming a War Time President.

Politics is running for office, and if elected, continues to run for office.

Nothing judges them, they do not have to show a profit, they do not get paid less, the only goal is 50.1% of the vote.

When Warren Buffet bailed out Goldman Sachs, for $5 Billion, he got 10%. When the government bailed out the industry, they are lucky to get our money back.

Those who caused the problem got bailed, but the homeowners got nothing.

Illegals do not just work for less, they cut wages for a much larger group of Citizens. Around here they are the roofing companies, painters, who used to come in from the country, make money in the cities, to support themselves. All of those workers cannot compete, they always get underbid.

What was a long standing low income group that did work, are now the long term unemployed. Once they paid something, Social Security, Child Support, Sales Tax, but now that goes directly to Mexico, untaxed.

The Dream Act, a college graduate who joins the Army, can become a citizen. I know graduates who were not citizens who were drafted for Viet Nam. They were in the country, then in the Army.

Non citizens can serve in the Army. This is a long standing deal. We need people with language skills. They need a new passport, because they can never go home again.

Some, like the Vietnemese, were not the downtroden poor, they served the US at home, and got a Passport. It might be a pig in lipstick, but we still need it.

What we do not need is people working for less because they do not pay taxes, Social Security, Unemployment, then sending the money out of the country.

Not all work, many fill our jails, Hospitals, Schools, which we pay for.

They are a burden we never asked for. Once we had a Guest Worker Program, work the farms, after a health and background check. Now anyone who can break out of a Mexican prison is welcome, and mostly cannot be questioned by the police.

The result is our net worth and income is back to 1968 levels. We cannot afford to stay on this path.

Back to economics, we can tax all goods coming in, and all money leaving, and put a transaction tax on speculation. A tax on Net Worth would be good. Social Security can be fixed for good by making it apply to all forms of income up to $200,000.

None of this will get me elected,

Seriously, I think Obama wants the country to go over the fiscal cliff, and then have his propaganda corps (which most people here consider to be credible news sources), blame Republicans...

I mean seriously, the Executive Branch does not have power of the purse, that is in the perview of Congress...

I'm not sure if anyone else here knows about the fact that Geitner's "compromise" proposal would give the President the power to raise the debt ceiling whenever he felt like it (potentially giving him a credit card with no limit), btw we would be paying an increasingly large amount of money just paying for the interest of said debt.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/50027858

We're currently projected to have a $20 Trillion dollar+ deficit by the year 2016.

And please accept my apologies for those times when I have failed to meet the standard that I have set for myself.



But what interest can that possibly serve? If government assistance was designed to make people dependent, then surely you would expect that government would not erect so many barriers to its access. Now I don't deny that there is an "empire building" mentality in all public services, and that the bureaucracy that administers assistance has an interest in preserving its existence--but there is no political advantage in that.

If the state truly wished to move into a position of creating dependence, then I believe that they would have done so with far more substantial programs, aimed at a much broader cohorts.



Who said anything about religious charities? There are plenty of charitable institutions out there that are non-denominational, and there are plenty of religious charities that are prepared to accept secular guidelines for program delivery. Religious organizations are free to keep themselves outside of government frameworks for charitable program delivery by not participating. Nothing could be simpler.



You are looking at what is--I am looking at what could be. The post office need only be the building in which officials of other departments work--much cheaper than opening a full scale office in a tiny community. As for the issue of state governments--remember that the federal government is not the only level of government that participates in the relief of poverty--and a great deal of federal expenditures is composed of transfers to other levels of government. Your federal government is not as talented at is as ours (we call it "the federal spending power" up here), but the interrelationship between the levels of government is an important factor to consider in effective program delivery.



And you just carry on being incredibly offensive. World AIDS Day was on Saturday--did you learn nothing on that day?





None of which alters my perception of your posting behaviour. I am perfectly respectful of your choices as far as trust in the media are concerned. I disagree with it, in part, in so far as I lump Fox and the entire News International group into the same pot with the rest of the "mainstream media."

But if there is inherent bias in media, then surely that imposes two obligations on the critical thinker: 1) consume news and information from multiple sources; and 2) remain open minded. If I saw you citing more sources than Fox/WSJ, I would be more ready to accept that you engage in the first. But nothing in your posts suggests to me that you come here with an open mind. Perhaps you have an open mind initially--but by the time you come to this forum, your ideas appear to be fixed, and you are unwilling to compromise them.

Now in some areas that is understandable. I never expect--nor indeed want--to change your opinion on something like abortion. I acknowledge that we are going to be as far apart as we are, and that is unlikely to change. But on something as fluid as monetary and fiscal policy, I would expect all participants in a debate to participate in dialogue as opposed to diatribe.



But that doesn't mean that you cannot try to break yourself of bad habits.



Perfectly understandable. But I would encourage you to come and join me on crossfire island, rather than residing in the trenches.



I have a few of those--and you and I have had long battles on them. But I truly believe that these abolutist positions should be the exception, rather than the rule.



I'm not sure that my perspective has changed--although I have made a concerted effort to cut out the ad personam remarks and keep the tone professional. And, I should add, you seem to have done the same.



"Idiots?"

As for marriage vs. civil union, that is the old "separate but equal" doctrine. It's bad law for water fountains and restrooms and it's bad law for legal relationships. If you legislate that a "civil union" carries precisely the same rights in law as a "marriage", then where is the objection to calling it a marriage. Now, there is an objection, I agree--because names matter. By creating a civil union that is separate but equal to marriage, the law would be saying that same-sex relationships are of a lesser status than married relationships. That is, to my mind, an intolerable place for the law to put itself.

My belief is that civil unions should exist--for both same-sex and opposite sex couples, and that they should come with a different package of rights than marriages. They should be easier to establish, easier to dissolve, and should create fewer interests in property and maintenance than marriages. Couples would then have a choice.



I still don't see that this is relevant to the absolutism of your point of view. You are picking away at particular policies--and not without merit. But that does not lead me to a place where I can agree that your posts are 100% correct, 100% of the time. Where is the margin for doubt? Where is the engagement with the alternative point of view?



I disagree with your first statement. Your legislature is so dysfunctional that is patently difficult to get anything--whether expenditure cut or revenue increase--legislated.

Now, in the news media that I have been reading (all of it non-American, I admit), the general view is that the Republicans have made significant moves--particularly the public statements that revenue is, at long last, on the table. Where I see Republicans still taking it on the chin is the insistence on expenditure cuts in social security--that won't have any impact on the government's fiscal deficit. While changes to eligibility and indexing will help move social security to a point of financial stability (which is laudable) it should not, in my view, be a dealbreaker for an approach to the fiscal deficity.

For my part, I think the two approaches must go hand in hand. Neither expenditure cuts nor revenue increases can be a perfect solution, and neither can be implemented immediately. Insisting that either precede the other seems to be an excercise in oneupmanship, rather than a coherent, negotiated approach to solution.



What has that got to to with the Democrats and the Republicans both wasting time posturing while failing to reach concensus on an approach to fiscal policy?

Longer view, when the Dow goes up 10% a years as it used to, investments double in seven years nine months.

Since most investment are Institutional, Pension Funds, they were somewaht upset when the Dow Hit 10,000, 1999, and has stayed there, now 13,000 in inflation adjusted dollars.

No income for pension funds has lead to massive government spending, betting that people without a name, job, credit history should get an FHA Mortgage, wars, bailouts, Bush Bucks, and anything else to get their pension funds moving again.

They currently have less than half of what they thought they would, and We The People have $16 Trillion in debt.

Government Pensions are way underfunded, and they are on the hook for Social Security. 45 Million war babies retire over the next decade. One, they stop paying taxes, two, they want their check, that they paid over 15% of their lifetime earnings for.

Student Loans exceed Credit Card debt, and both are funded and run by The Government Employees Loanshark Fund.

The Federal Reserve is buying Mortgage Backed Securities from, The Government Employees Pension Fund, at face value. Privitize the win, socialize the loss.

It does not work, the math can never work, only the printing press can pay the outstanding debt.

So this little political dance is just a show, as The House has to come up with a solution, and there is none possible.

They are just where Bernie Madoff was when the market tanked, they owe a lot, with no way to cover it.

They are where Enron and Worldcom were when they were booking the electric bill as income, the hole between income and obligations has grown larger than net worth.

One market that was rigged to support the Government Pension Fund was Oil, $13 when Bush took office, now a tax on everyone for the benefit of, Government Employees. Yes, they own the oil companies that withdraw the public wealth and privatize it. Norway has a 90% tax, they still have the strictist drilling rules, and no shortage of people who will take the job.

They are also the people who wrote the regulation, let the contracts, that logged all of the old growth forests on public lands. They were also the owners of the companies that did the logging, ran the mills, and sold the lumber, a lot to Japan, as we get our building material from Canada.

The old growth forests of the west had a lot to do with the water cycle, which lead to the current drought. It was owned by the Public, and now it is gone.

Agrabusiness, another branch of the Government Pension Plan, got grants to buy up more and more land, and consolidate ownership, into Pension Fund hands.

They still do not have half enough to fund their retirement, and have to extract that much more in the near future, and another Zombie Decade, they will have 1/8 of what they need.

Their fishing fleets have pillaged the oceans, their power plants have stripmined the land, fouled the air, and it is still far from their goal.

Notice the rise of gambling, and where the mob used to pay 90%, the number racket, they pay 50%, then tax the winings.

Left and Right are two hands stealing everything.

Apology accepted.



The thing you need to remember is that we still have two political parties visagrunt. The Republicans often are the ones trying to set up conditions on those programs in an attempt to try to incentivise people to work to get themselves off of those programs, the welfare reform in the 1990s is a good example of this. The Democrats as we've seen under the Obama administration often put up road blocks to make it harder for people to keep those benefits if they find work (even when the job doesn't pay enough to warrant the individual losing said benefits, and thus encourage them to simply give up (the Obama White House unilaterally waived the work requirement from the 1990s in violation of the law).

The primary reason why the Democrats won this last election has to do with the number of people whom are now dependent on government for everything. Make people lose hope in something better, make them dependent on government programs, and you can effectively gain a permanent majority voting base.

Reason you can't say the same about Conservative Republicans is fairly simple, if people are more self-reliant, they are less likely to tolerate government behaving badly. It's when people are dependent on government and see no way out of it, when they are dependent on government for their food, when they have no hope of things changing for the better, that's when you see the danger of dictatorships forming.



I wouldn't view Red Cross as being a decent charity anymore, they used to be, but now they waste an awful lot of money on other things.

Additionally, I wouldn't trust government around non-religious charities either, these days whatever government sticks their nose in gets turned into a mess.

Btw, the huge electric grid fiasco out east demonstrates just how bad the State governments are in the North East. To be rather blunt, there are quite a few states that have significantly better electrical grids, that are not an antiquated mess.



Then how would said community get their mail? UPS and Fed Ex tend to also set up full offices in smaller communities and do just fine... The problem is Public Sector Unions and the incompetitence of Government in general. visagrunt, the problem is that the postal service hasn't bothered to become more efficient, and they continue to lose money because private sector delivery services can do the same job faster, cheaper, and the delivered item being much less likely to have a hole kicked into the box. The only reason anyone uses them for mail delivery is because it is illegal for entities like Fed Ex and UPS to deliver letters...



I'm looking at this as to how the disease is spread, I'm not insulting anyone, it is rather blatently obvious this disease could be practically eliminated from the United States in a generation. Despite it being extremely hard to destroy the virus when it is in the body, it is ridiculously fragile outside of the human body, thus it can't be spread through the air, nor can it be spread by skin to skin contact, touching an infected person's clothing either. HIV can only be spread by exchanging bodily fluids, that makes it for all intents and purposes a fairly easy disease to stop the spread of.

I'm not proposing killing people with HIV, nor imprisonment (unless they deliberately try to infect others with the disease, generally people with AIDs are in more danger from other people due to a compromised immune system). I don't disagree with the research to find a way to eliminate the virus, but I am going to point out the blatently obvious fact that even if we can't find a cure for it, we can prevent its spread fairly easily, and could practically eliminate it entirely in the United States within a generation and still be humane about it.


[/quote]

visagrunt, the only reason they aren't getting paid minimum wage is because there are some unethical individuals trying to exploit them... There are also some illegals that actually get paid minimum wage and have stolen people's identities to get the job. If you plan on raising minimum wage to the point no company can afford to say in business, then you may have a point, but then that is the result of government stupidity...



I have posted from sources other than Fox News and still been met with the same criticism as though I posted from Fox News, even when it was from say CNN, or something linked from Drudge Report (btw, Drudge Report is a news link search engine, that means it connects to a large number of different news agencies)...



visagrunt, there is a difference between bias and out and out lieing, I seriously believe much of the media has actually crossed the line into the realm of being propaganda machines for the Democrat Party.

I understand Fox News has a Conservative Bias in their commentary programs, however they often take great pains to ensure they get both sides of the debate in a way that none of the other networks do. Unless you want to suggest that people like Bob Beckel, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, Alan Colmes (whom is semi-retired), and Geraldo Rivera are Conservatives, then Fox News has more Liberals than all the other networks have Conservatives COMBINED (and that is just off the top of my head). I know PBS occassionally has Charles Krauthammer (sp?) and MSNBC has Joe Scarbourough (whom arguably isn't a Conservative), but that's it. All the others have left the networks and went to Fox News or to start their own blog.



visagrunt, since I don't believe this country has the money to spend on things in the first place, I think a lot of these things need to be cut regardless of how sympathetic I am on the issue. There are some things that I think could be eventually brought back, but only after we pay down the debt (by paying down the debt and eventually eliminating it, we no longer will have to pay interest on said debt, which would free up money for programs that had been cut, they couldn't be a bloated as they once were, but that doesn't mean they can't be brought back somewhat).



I think I've been acting fairly well given the fact I really am scared about the direction this country is headed, I think you would be acting no better than I am currently if the same thing were happening to Canada and accelerating into a one way trip to ruin.



I'm one of only a handful of Conservatives here, if I back off then in all honesty that's what a lot of liberals here would want is for Conservatives here to not speak up (not directed at you visagrunt, but I think you probably know the individuals that I'm referring to).



I try to keep them to a minimum as well, but I do believe that one has to be very careful on things, some things should not be compromised on, or you just open things up to being completely eroded.



I actually think it may have changed, you haven't simply acted more mature recently, I do think you are beginning to shift closer to the political center than you were a year ago. As for me, I probably haven't changed must, my sarcasm and biting remarks were more from general frustration of people not noticing or seeming not to care about things that from my standpoint are rather blatently obvious.



From my standpoint I view marriage as more than simply a secular issue, I also view it as a religious issue. A "civil union" could be argued as something that is entirely secular which means it isn't getting into territory of potentially getting into an attack on people's religious liberties. I'm not looking at this as a "seperate but equal" situation, I'm looking at this as one term is religious and secular (marriage), and the other is entirely secular (civil unions). Religious people are less inclined to object to "civil unions," due to the fact you aren't turning this into what could be considered an attack on their religious liberty.

The segregation garbage post-civil war is not equivalent though I understand why people can be under the mistaken impression that it is.



I'm not as absolutist as you may think, I've never claimed I was 100% correct, 100% of the time, I'm not a ideological fanatic. I do believe that I'm probably correct on issues significantly more often than you realize, but then I do think I'm better at reading neurotypicals a lot better than most people here are. I've also seen more of the corruption in US government than just about everyone here has. When I was an intern out near DC back in 2010, a coworker offered to hook me up with a prostitute, and I was like WTH, he wasn't joking, but I said I wasn't interested. Also due to the fact I live a few hours from Chicago, I know that that city is even more corrupt than Washington DC, there is a lot of "pay to play" schemes in Illinois politics, which Obama seems to have taken with him to Washington, and therefore I'm looking at a pattern that you wouldn't be expected to know about since you don't live in the United States, let alone near Chicago.



Look at what happened to Paul Ryan, where he got demonized by the President of the United States...



Except that Obama's proposal included essentially doing away with the debt ceiling (giving the President power to raise it whenever he feels like), and actually increasing spending instead with double the proposed tax increases that he was calling for in the election (something that I'm actually not surprised about), all his talk about a "balanced approach" seems to have really meant was just tax hikes to fund even more spending.



There is a difference between posturing and outright hatred towards those one disagrees with.

I think your political calculus is too simplistic. For example, let's consider how many donors to Republican coffers (and supportive super-PACs) benefit directly from the generosity of government transfers to individuals. Walmart gets away with exploitative wages because so many of the people who work their full-time are reliant on food stamps.



If government is broken, the answer is not to limit government, it is to fix government. Excising government strikes me as a lazy approach to public policy, ultimately abdicating any responsibility for the maintenance of a just society.

Similar principals apply to private charity--after all, no organization is free from waste and corruption. But one of the advantages of government funded relief programs is that government can impose accountability standards that individual donors cannot. You can give your $100 to the ARC, and you have zero influence over how much of that money is spent on internal administration and fundraising. On the other hand, when Government cuts a cheque for $10,000,000, government can set rules about how those dollars are spent.

At the end of the day, you aren't going to trust government, and nothing that I say is going to persuade you otherwise. But the relief of poverty remains a fundamental responsibility of a just society, and a government that cedes that responsibility to private charity is abdicating its obligations to its most vulnerable citizens.



The same way they do now. Colocating government services in a single building does not mean that any services need to be cut.

And before you start talking about the cost and efficiency of the USPS, find me any example of a private courier service that can deliver a letter for less than the cost of a first class postage stamp. Show me any delivery service that can undercut the cost of parcel post. Meanwhile, the post office products that directly compete with courier services (Priority Mail and Express Mail) can compete with precisely the same standards of service and on price.



First, you cannot "practically eliminate" HIV from the United States by the means you propose. Infectious disease is my area of internal medicine and I will assure you that no disease has ever been suppressed in such a fashion.

I will tell you how HIV could be eliminated. It could be eliminated by provided each and every person infected with HIV with free access to anti-retroviral therapy during their life times. So long as a persons viral load is undetectable, the opportunity for transmission is negligible. But I don't see a single Republican politician standing up and advocating for the international distribution of antiretrovirals free at the point of delivery to every infected person on earth. And so long as they fail in that, they demonstrate themselves to be content to allow HIV to continue to thrive.

You pretend at knowledge that you don't have and you rely on specious reasoning. And you have done nothing to retreat from the abominably insulting behaviour you demonstrated earlier.

The Tylenol scare invovled 7 deaths, and it had daily news coverage for months. AIDS involved thousands of deaths, and the President didn't even acknowledge its existence for over four years. In 1980, Toxic Shock involved a handful of cases in two states, and government mobilized tens of millions of dollars to address it. When government finally dedicated money to research into AIDS it was a paltry sum, and politically manipulated to prevent cooperation with the far more advanced work taking place at the Institut Pasteur.

You have no concept of how damaging the wilful misconduct of the Administration in the 1980's was to gay men. You didn't see friends get sick and die; you didn't treat patients who were denied access to hospitals, fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments all because government was too cowardly to step in to enact and enforce laws that ought properly to have protected them. Never before in the history of the United States had the government stood by and done nothing while tens of thousands of people died. That is the legacy of AIDS--and any attempt to discuss its epidaemeological history without acknowledging that is an insult to every person who died needlessly during that period, and to those who survived them.



But you still haven't answered how those jobs are going to be performed when those unethical individuals who run those businesses can no longer get away with those practices.

I acknowledge without reservation that illegal immigrants are subject to illegal treatment by employers and by landlords. And yet, they are still in your cities, working in these jobs. So explain to me how these cities will function without that exploitation.



I don't doubt that you seriously believe that. And I don't doubt that you are misguided in your belief. But I respect it as yours, and I would not dream of stopping you from getting your news and information from there.

But so long as you continue to cite no one buy Fox and WSJ, you will present yourself as a one-sided consumer. You might believe yourself to be balanced, but I doubt that anyone else is going to agree that you are without some evidence that you do, in fact, consume information from sources outside of News Corporation.



That's a fundamental area of disagreement for us. Of course your country has the money to spend on all of these things--you simply need to develop the means to direct the money at them. Now tax and spend is an easy mechanism--but I will readily acknowledge that it has the potential to be facile, and is open to misuse.

But Government has many other tools in its chest with which to accomplish spending on public priorities. And so I rather think that, "cut these things," is just as facile an argument as "tax in order to spend on these things." If you don't want government to tax and spend, then come up with ideas about how government can accomplish the ends by different means.



I think that you are being alarmist. You live in the wealthiest country on the planet, and your per-capital GDP is among the highest in the world. Your problem is not, and never has been that you are headed to ruin. Your problem is that you cannot develop a political concensus about how to pay for the things that need to be paid for. Like health care, education, and the relief of poverty.

Congress indulged in political cowardice for forty years, by subsidising low taxes on the backs of people willing to buy dollars. Well, those days are soon to be over and the chickens have come home to roost. But the debts of the United States are still vastly outweighed by her assets. The United States Government could liquidate its way out of debt tomorrow, provided that people were willing to see federal assets (like national parks, mineral rights, ports, defence establishments, air navigation systems, interstate highways, etc.) all devolve into private hands. Given that much of your national debt is money that the government owes itself (through interfund transfers) or owes internally, you are actually in a pretty healthy place, provided that you can get a handle on the inequities of distribution of wealth.



I understand that. But I do believe that someone like Dox47 is a far more effective advocates for his views (which, admittedly, are not necessarily, "conservative") than you are for yours.



My impression is that the things you will not compromise outnumber those on which you will. But it may be a mistaken impression based on the issues that you choose to post on. I wish I could see more of your posts on issues on which you would be willing to stake out a middle ground.



I have always occupied the political center--but I suspect I have focussed less on propounding progressive issues than on propounding the abatement of partisanship and the quest for concensus.

It is a failing of these online fora that we can only be categorized by our postings, and not by the thought that lies behind them and our more general behaviour.



Your argument might have some weight, if civil unions hadn't been demonstrated to fail when they were tried out in New Jersey. A government commission found that, "the law invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children." http://www.nj.gov/oag/dcr/downloads/CUR ... eport-.pdf

So, while you might not look at this as a "separate but equal" circumstance, the courts certainly have; and I suspect will continue to do so. The Supreme Court of Connecticut invalidated its civil union legislation as unconstitutional on the equal protection basis. http://www.jud.state.ct.us/external/sup ... 9CR152.pdf I see no reason to believe that this will not be the general treatment of further attempts to justify civil unions as an alternative to legal marriage.

But I tend to the view that the horse is already out of the barn. With electoral wins in 2012, I believe that the writing is on the wall.

I do acknowledge that this is not the only way that things could have gone. If government had, for example, decided that religious marriage ceases to confer legal standing, then I am all in favour. But so long as religious marriage confers legal rights upon spouses, regligious marriage cannot be exempt from legal scrutiny. But if every couple married in a church must turn around and register a civil union in order to gain the legal benefits, then I see no objection whatsoever. (And, of course, those congregations that actually want to perform same sex marriages, or polygamous marriages would then be free to do so, because no legal status would arise from those, either).



Well, you have never been at pains to demonstrate yourself to be open to dialogue. If you aren't an ideological fanatic (and I take you at your word that you are not), I really only have your word for that. I would like to see more of that openness.

And as far as corruption goes--I don't think that Chicago can hold a candle to the city where I grew up: Montréal. Québec has already lost three mayors to resignations in corruption scandals this year, and the Charbonneau Commission hasn`t even reported yet. I will wager that Chicago is tame by comparison.



And quite enough demonization took place in the reverse direction as well. All of which serves to demonstrate that partisanship still trumps the well-being of the country. In the minds of both parties.



I have never aligned myself with the Administration's proposal.

My personal view is that you need to introduce a 5% value added tax, and zero-rate groceries, housing, education, and medical/dental care. But a flat 5% value added tax on every other commercial transaction in the United States. Consumption taxation is a far healthier approach to taxation than income tax, and it gives government a vested interest in maintaining consumer confidence. It taxes the wealthy--who can afford to consume more--in direct proportion to their spending, and provides the government with a reliable stream of revenue, without a significant increase in the size of the bureaucratic machine.

Couple this will spending cuts in discretionary areas; with some tinkering on eligibility and indexing for entitlement programs, and you could find yourself in the black within five years.



I still don't see this as relevant. "We're not as bad as they are," is not an excuse for failing to do one's duty.

????????????

The current Federal Tax on income is $3 Trillion out of $15 Trillion, which is 20%.

State Income Tax, another 5%, plus Sales Tax, 5-10%, and all of the other taxes, on gas, utilities, much less the gouging on Sin, gambling, tobacco, drink.

Altogether we are taxed more than a third.

For the record, all governments in the past that taxed the people more than a third have fallen.

A flat tax on consumption favors the rich, who might spend more, but have income beyond their needs, that would go tax free.

The purchase of Stock is tax free, as is placing bets on the Commodies Markets, and winnings are granted Capital Gains rates. The same bet on the lottery, is taxed 50% for playing, and another tax if you win.

Taxing money, transactions, is where the money is.

A tax on all investments, !% paid at purchase, reduces speculation, and brings in government income for no work.

A Capital Pool can buy a Billion in Tax Free Bonds, and pay no tax on the transaction, or on the winnings.

They can buy an endless amount of Stock, with no tax till it is sold, but they do not need to sell, they can borrow against the higher value, so they do have access to the Capital.

Most of the wealth is in Securities, and is held tax free.

Most of the wealth in America is held by 2%, who are living tax free, and putting the cost of government on the low paid workers.

Buying a company, breaking it up, firing the workers, moving production to China, is tax free. Importing the good from China is tax free, and only the profit declared on the sale is taxable, which is passed along to the customer, and included in the price.

This is a great system, for Billionairs.

You make a critical error. Aggregate federal revenue is nowhere close to 20% of GDP. Aggregate federal expenditure is approximately 20% of GDP, and as we all know, there is a deficit to account for in there. The real figure is that federal revenue is approximately 14% of GDP (2010 figures). In 2010, the total revenue from individual income taxes was $899 billion, which represents about 6% of GDP. Payroll taxes represented a further $865 billion, for an aggregation of 12%. And that 12% is not evenly distributed.

The best measure is the "total effective tax rate" which aggregates all taxes and mandatory contributions for all levels of government. The total effective tax rate in the United States, which aggregates all taxes and mandatory contributions, ranges between 17.4% for the lowest quintile to 30.4% for the top 5%--exclusive of the top 1% (whose total effective tax rate is only 29%). No one breaks 33%, the mean TETR is about 27.4% and the median effective tax rate is closer to 25%. http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf

You have revenue capacity left, but no one with the political courage to tap it.