You do realize that cutting deductions and loopholes (the big Republican push at the moment) would primarily effect the wealthiest of people, right?
It takes a lot of time and money to minimize your taxes on your own, and paying the right people costs quite a bit.
Unless they go after the EIC or child credits, I do agree with that, but I've always maintained a position that Eliminating things like corporate welfare is not equal to a tax increase dispite the fact that it would cause those people to pay more taxes.
The reason I have a problem with the whole "pay your fair share" arguement is that it implies that all rich people pay less taxes than the poor (who next to no taxes or negative taxes due to refundable credits) so they aren't pulling thier own weight, when in reality they are just trying to reduce their tax burden.
I guess its a matter of calling it tax reform rather than openly calling for class warfare by asking for a 3+% increase in the nominal rate of the wealthiest.
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Unless they go after the EIC or child credits, I do agree with that, but I've always maintained a position that Eliminating things like corporate welfare is not equal to a tax increase dispite the fact that it would cause those people to pay more taxes.
The reason I have a problem with the whole "pay your fair share" arguement is that it implies that all rich people pay less taxes than the poor (who next to no taxes or negative taxes due to refundable credits) so they aren't pulling thier own weight, when in reality they are just trying to reduce their tax burden.
I guess its a matter of calling it tax reform rather than openly calling for class warfare by asking for a 3+% increase in the nominal rate of the wealthiest.
I think you are missing the point somewhat. The richer you are and the poorer you are the less you pay in taxes compared to your base progressive tax rate. The argument is more "let's raise the effective tax to what is should be on those who can afford it, not on everyone".
Think of it this way, the biggest deviations from linear with regard to income tax are for those making less than $8000 a year (single) or $16,000 a year (married filing jointly), and those making more than $165,000 a year (single) or $200,000 a year (married filing jointly). One group can get enough deductions in a set dollar amount to wipe out how much taxes they are paying, and one group can afford to hire the best people to give them the advice they need to minimize their tax payments. It also illustrates how much the super-wealthy do not have a fair tax burden to pay (they pay as much as someone making a dime on the dollar in income taxes).
Simply put, the wealthiest 3% and the poorest 16% are both underpaying on their taxes but that top 3% represents a lot more lost federal revenue in taxes than that poorest 16%.
And I still don't understand how we don't have tax rates determined by a function instead of brackets. Or at least a series of functions.
The reason I have a problem with the whole "pay your fair share" arguement is that it implies that all rich people pay less taxes than the poor (who next to no taxes or negative taxes due to refundable credits) so they aren't pulling thier own weight, when in reality they are just trying to reduce their tax burden.
It depends entirely how you see it - when you realize that without many of the public services available most of those wealthy folks wouldn't have any reasonable amount of workers available to them and then suddenly their portion looks relatively different.
Just because the direct beneficiary of something is assisted doesn't mean there isn't a "trickle down" effect in how it helps others.
For an RL example: Hunt Valley, MD when I was opening our most recent location before my retirement literally doubled the business permit costs incurred for a town center based grocery with our square footage which initially was a huge bite in the rear for me since it screwed up my payroll numbers I'd projected and been working with - fortunately though they were using those dollars to complete the light rail system up to Hunt Valley which when it was completed shortly after we opened suddenly we had three times the applicants, asking for lower salaries and more customers. (although $/customer dropped slightly, our customer base went up close to 50%)
Would our owner or even any of we management there use the light rail to make the portions we ended up footing of the cost? Of course not - but did it benefit us indirectly? Immensely so.
(and yes, management opted out of our pay raises that year voluntarily across the board to help with the costs in advance - we were allowed to double up next review though [or at least I think so, was scheduled for early summer - my disability really started taking me out of work the Easter before]
It becomes very hard to have employees and customers without roads and other public amenities that don't directly benefit them more than anyone else in a myopic view - and a very large portion of wealthy people need such things in order to stay in business.
Roads and Utilities are within the bounds of government because they give everyone an opportunity. Without the rail system to get those people to where you work, you could have paid higher wages (which people here seem to think is a good thing) and those "rail riders" would have been left back in the hood jobless.
They benefited from that rail too. Your boss might have seen a 50% increase, but they saw a 100% increase. Jobless to Job. Your boss was paying thier taxes anyway in thier paychecks.
The one thing that stood out to me in this story is "government raised the permit fees making it harder to start a business".
The point is that we already have a progressive tax scale. I have yet to see any argument why it needs to be MORE progressive. Why should we take a scale (not real numbers) from 5-10-15-20-25-30 to 5-10-15-20-30-40 rather than 8-13-18-23-28-33? People don't put value on what they don't pay for. Every time I hear someone say "the government should do something" I ask them if they would pay 10% more of thier income to make it happen. They shut up or regurgitate "tax the rich" IE anyone but me.
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There are certain things that the people want the government to do such as handle Medicare, Social Security, Military, Infrastructure, Welfare Programs, Disaster Relief, Scientific Research... ....that require a certain amount of money. Since the rich are less likely to feel the burden of higher taxes, it is best for them to pay it. Obviously the taxes aren't so severe because the rich are still gaining more and more wealth and the wealth disparity is getting larger.
Though, we wouldn't have to tax the rich as much if they hired more people and paid them more...
There are certain things that the people want the government to do such as handle Medicare, Social Security, Military, Infrastructure, Welfare Programs, Disaster Relief, Scientific Research... ....that require a certain amount of money. Since the rich are less likely to feel the burden of higher taxes, it is best for them to pay it. Obviously the taxes aren't so severe because the rich are still gaining more and more wealth and the wealth disparity is getting larger.
Though, we wouldn't have to tax the rich as much if they hired more people and paid them more...
Not everyone agrees on those things as the role of the federal government.
Again I will repeat that people don't place value on what they don't pay for.
Wealth disparity is getting larger because the poor don't have enough education on how to get themselves out of poverty. Government only has limited means to fix that. Hand outs only make this problem worse, esp when the taxes collected don't come close to the money being distributed.
Quote from Alexander Tyler »
A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury...
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Not everyone agrees on those things as the role of the federal government.
Except that they do. The people who complain the loudest wanting small government are also the first people to complain when they feel the government needs to step in and isn't.
Again I will repeat that people don't place value on what they don't pay for.
And I will agree with you, hence, we need to put people back to work and contributing to society.
Wealth disparity is getting larger because the poor don't have enough education on how to get themselves out of poverty. Government only has limited means to fix that. Hand outs only make this problem worse, esp when the taxes collected don't come close to the money being distributed.
Do you consider Pell Grants to be just government hand outs? Cause I know plenty of people who rely on them and are thankful for them. Education is a problem for poor people yes, but that is mostly because they come from poor environments, I think one thing that the government should do is start more urban revitalization projects.
Cantor and co. rejected anything that contained revenue increases with cries of "No tax increases!" no matter how good the deal was.
yes because it has nothing to do with the fact that federal spending has increased 40% over the past 6 years or so. about 20% under bush and about 20% under obama.
that is almost the entire deficit right there. in which the federal government functioned perfectly fine before those major increases.
However, Cantor and his Tea Party cronies shut down any meaningful consideration of it all for ideological reasons.
No they shut it down because they realize that more taxes = more spending. the tax increases proposed would not have gone to pay down the deficit or the debt it would have gone to more social programs and other waste.
why should the american people foot the irresponsibility of government? we do that now. maybe just maybe if government showed they were responsible with what they have then people would view taxes differently.
they are not responsible.
The problem is that a fringe part of the Republican party threw a fit and dragged the rest of the party down with them. I don't blame all Republicans for the deal we've got; I just blame those that treat compromise like an STD.
The dem's did the same thing. they threw a fit over actually trying to reign in bloated government social programs. the pitched one fit and a half and refused to compromise they treated it like an STD. only it wasn't the fringe of the democratic party it was the whole democratic party.
It goes both ways.
I also blame Boehner for not sticking up for the original deal and telling the Tea Party nuts to shut up.
I didn't see pelosi or Reid doing that either so i guess they are just as spineless.
The sensible politicians in both parties should be pointing the finger directly at the fanatics and telling their constituents that uncompromising is not an admirable trait in Washington.
when you are elected by the people to on the platform that you want to reign in government spending and are elected to try and do that then that is what you do. you leave it up to the people in your district to decide if you are doing a good enough job.
if you are then you will get re-elected if not then you will lose.
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yes because it has nothing to do with the fact that federal spending has increased 40% over the past 6 years or so. about 20% under bush and about 20% under obama.
that is almost the entire deficit right there. in which the federal government functioned perfectly fine before those major increases.
About 15% of that was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and related secondary attachments to the DHS - are you suggesting that we just throw the DHS program away?
After all, things ran pretty smoothly without the DHS for a very long time.
No they shut it down because they realize that more taxes = more spending. the tax increases proposed would not have gone to pay down the deficit or the debt it would have gone to more social programs and other waste.
This is nonsense that can easily be flipped the other way too - "They just shut down any tax increases because they realized that less spending can create the need for less taxes allowing tax rates to be further cut while not bothering with the deficit.
It's poor theorycraft that requires partisan blinders to believe it would actually be the intended outcome.
why should the american people foot the irresponsibility of government? we do that now. maybe just maybe if government showed they were responsible with what they have then people would view taxes differently.
they are not responsible.
Less administrative costs + waste (as a total of both, since admin costs help curb waste they're sane to lump together) in Medicare than in privately owned insurance companies, far more cost efficient law enforcement and defense services than offered privately.
Heck even the DARPA backbone to the Internet is more stable than the MAE's that are privately handled.
I'd really like to start seeing some solid examples of irresponsibility that saliently shows a wide reaching problem.
The dem's did the same thing. they threw a fit over actually trying to reign in bloated government social programs. the pitched one fit and a half and refused to compromise they treated it like an STD. only it wasn't the fringe of the democratic party it was the whole democratic party.
Right because times when the economy is in the toilet and more people need social programs to assist them it makes sense to cut back the hardest on those programs.
Makes a ton of sense to cut those programs when finding a job to get off them is difficult.... once unemployment is back under control where those people could have a reasonable chance at getting back to work is another story though, but we're not there yet.
I didn't see pelosi or Reid doing that either so i guess they are just as spineless.
They've not said that Tea Party demands are hazardous? Do you just immediately ignore anything they say? Because about a full third of the quotes I've seen from them have had some level of condemnation or at least implication of the Tea Party being a bad force in politics.
when you are elected by the people to on the platform that you want to reign in government spending and are elected to try and do that then that is what you do. you leave it up to the people in your district to decide if you are doing a good enough job.
if you are then you will get re-elected if not then you will lose.
And multiple of those constituencies have been polled with 60-70% supporting some sort of resolution including all factors - taxation, various cuts, etc - whatever it takes to get it under control.
Remember our political system is supposed to be a REPRESENTATIVE Democracy - every single one of those that are voting out of line with how their constituency feels should be subject to immediate removal IMO - its personally disgusting to me that House members aren't subject to recall - two years may sound fast, but a ton of damage can be done by those ignoring the wishes of their constituents.
About 15% of that was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and related secondary attachments to the DHS - are you suggesting that we just throw the DHS program away?
After all, things ran pretty smoothly without the DHS for a very long time.
the DHS is a clustered mess of an organization. half the time depending on who is in charge it can't tell which way is up.
as i said government spending has increased about 40% cutting back on that would almost take care of the budget if we go back to 2004-2005 spending levels.
This is nonsense that can easily be flipped the other way too - "They just shut down any tax increases because they realized that less spending can create the need for less taxes allowing tax rates to be further cut while not bothering with the deficit.
It's poor theorycraft that requires partisan blinders to believe it would actually be the intended outcome.
what is non-sense is the constant push for tax increases when you keep raising your budget levels from the previous year. how about you start by cutting back on the spending vs forcing the public to pay for government lack of control.
Less administrative costs + waste (as a total of both, since admin costs help curb waste they're sane to lump together) in Medicare than in privately owned insurance companies, far more cost efficient law enforcement and defense services than offered privately.
Heck even the DARPA backbone to the Internet is more stable than the MAE's that are privately handled.
I'd really like to start seeing some solid examples of irresponsibility that saliently shows a wide reaching problem.
try reading a GAO (government accountability office) report sometime. Recently they have been packed full with billions of dollars in government waste and where the budgets can be cut etc...
waste and abuse run through the entire system.
Right because times when the economy is in the toilet and more people need social programs to assist them it makes sense to cut back the hardest on those programs.
Makes a ton of sense to cut those programs when finding a job to get off them is difficult.... once unemployment is back under control where those people could have a reasonable chance at getting back to work is another story though, but we're not there yet.
not when those programs are eating up the majority of the budget. if you want to get your spending under control then you have to look at what is the biggest factors.
entitlement and the military budget.
so don't cry at me with the fact that people are don't want their taxes raised when they are already working the butts off the way that it is.
more money taken out of the system is less money for people and individuals which means even less economic growth. that is a fact and there is no way to get around it.
They've not said that Tea Party demands are hazardous? Do you just immediately ignore anything they say? Because about a full third of the quotes I've seen from them have had some level of condemnation or at least implication of the Tea Party being a bad force in politics.
when did reid and pelosi tell their party to sit down and shut up about entitlement reform? never so i guess they are as spineless as boenher is.
the only people that consider the tea party hazardous are those that want to gorge themselves on tax payer dollars.
how many vacations has the president taken in 3 years? more than any other president. they just released the the number of executive branch limo's it has doubled under obama.
yet he is telling the american people to sacrifice? he is the epitome of hypocrasy and elitism. want to know how many vacations i have been on in the past 6 years. 0.
screw him.
They've not said that Tea Party demands are hazardous? Do you just immediately ignore anything they say? Because about a full third of the quotes I've seen from them have had some level of condemnation or at least implication of the Tea Party being a bad force in politics.
and they will get their chance in 2012. that is why we have elections every 2 years for house members.
two years may sound fast, but a ton of damage can be done by those ignoring the wishes of their constituents.
yea we know we saw the effects of obama, reid, pelosi it will take years to recover from the damage.
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try reading a GAO (government accountability office) report sometime. Recently they have been packed full with billions of dollars in government waste and where the budgets can be cut etc...
waste and abuse run through the entire system.
Waste and abuse run through EVERYTHING even private companies, and in many sectors similar private companies have either more abuse or administrative costs to prevent abuse.
For government being an "inefficient mess" it's rather amusing that in all but a few cases they post lower abuse/admin numbers than private industry doing the same things.
not when those programs are eating up the majority of the budget. if you want to get your spending under control then you have to look at what is the biggest factors.
entitlement and the military budget.
so don't cry at me with the fact that people are don't want their taxes raised when they are already working the butts off the way that it is.
more money taken out of the system is less money for people and individuals which means even less economic growth. that is a fact and there is no way to get around it.
Less people spending money also means less economic growth - and less people with money to spend (i.e. entitlements) makes it so there are fewer spenders.
Look at Consumer Confidence numbers sometime and compare them against entitlement levels - they ebb and flow together.
when did reid and pelosi tell their party to sit down and shut up about entitlement reform? never so i guess they are as spineless as boenher is.
There's a huge difference, they were on that page personally - Boehner has said he intended for his personal goals to include tax adjustments as part of things, he cowtowed to the fringe of his party.
Complete apples and oranges - one changed their view for the fringe of his party, the others shared their view with theirs.
the only people that consider the tea party hazardous are those that want to gorge themselves on tax payer dollars.
Yea, because things like the Ryan plan regarding Medicare really aren't hazardous to anyone.
how many vacations has the president taken in 3 years? more than any other president. they just released the the number of executive branch limo's it has doubled under obama.
He's taken tons of 2-3 day trips yes - W still has him beaten on time quite a bit however. And as for limos are you really commenting that much about another 2 limos that cost less than $1m for the pair?
yet he is telling the american people to sacrifice? he is the epitome of hypocrasy and elitism. want to know how many vacations i have been on in the past 6 years. 0.
screw him.
W was on trips 2 months out of the year for almost every year of his term - where's your rage against him? Obama timewise has been on vacation just over half of that even though he's taken many trips. [And the totals I'm seeing include business related ones]
and they will get their chance in 2012. that is why we have elections every 2 years for house members.
And two years is far too slow of a timeframe if they're not actually following the will of their constituency closely. Superpowers have fallen in 6 years before when a political process has been hijacked by a fringe element after all.
Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected.
yea we know we saw the effects of obama, reid, pelosi it will take years to recover from the damage.
/rolleyes - lets start listing those economy killing bills that need to be recovered from.
Never mind the fact that Republican control has existed to at least a reasonable level across Congress and the Executive branch for the majority of the past 30 years and that economies aren't quick to show the results of X or Y policy. (How many times have you claimed the first 2-4 years of Clinton was Bush Sr's doing, and the early years of W's term was Clinton's fault after all?)
Huelskamp wanted to know the answer to two questions:
1). What current federal departments, agencies, programs, or portions thereof do not contribute to economic growth?
2). In the programs that CBO believes do contribute to economic growth, what level of spending cuts would amount to a level you believe would be significant enough to "probably slow the economic recovery"?[...]
In a response letter Thursday, CBO-chief Doug Elmendorf gives Huelskamp a layman's lesson in Keynesian economics: Under current economic circumstances, new federal spending would help economic growth, and current and future cuts could stymie it, particularly if they hit key government investment.
"When demand for goods and services falls short of the economy's ability to produce them, as is the case currently, increasing government spending can increase aggregate demand and thereby narrow the gap between the economy's actual and potential levels of output," Elmendorf writes.
The precise details matter. The more robust the economy, the lower the impact. But, according to Elmendorf, "when the Federal Reserve's ability to lower short-run interest rates is constrained because those rates are already near zero, as they are currently, the short-run effects of changes in government spending on output tend to be larger than usual."[...]
"Some types of spending, such as funding for improvements to roads and highways, may add to the economy's potential output in much the same way that private capital investment does," Elmendorf writes. "Other policies, such as funding for grants to increase access to college education may raise long-term productivity by enhancing people's skills. The positive longer-term impact of deficit reduction on GNP would be smaller if the policies that reduced deficits included cuts in productive government investments.
But hey, who can trust the CBO right? They aren't experts at all.
Oh, and corporations aren't people, they are legal entities. People can go to jail when they commit crimes, corporations can't.
Waste and abuse run through EVERYTHING even private companies, and in many sectors similar private companies have either more abuse or administrative costs to prevent abuse.
For government being an "inefficient mess" it's rather amusing that in all but a few cases they post lower abuse/admin numbers than private industry doing the same things.
yea and those companies go out of business. government just demands more tax dollars.
of wait not they don't government wastes are tax dollars because those companies are to big to fail.
Less people spending money also means less economic growth - and less people with money to spend (i.e. entitlements) makes it so there are fewer spenders.
Look at Consumer Confidence numbers sometime and compare them against entitlement levels - they ebb and flow together.
please the 300 bucks that someone gets a week is only going to be spent when it has to. these acting like these people are supporting the economy in some way is ridiculous.
not to mention they are costing more than they are getting.
if what you say is true then consumer confidence should be at an all time high since well entitlement spending is at an all time high. yet it isn't consumer confidence is in the barrel.
There's a huge difference, they were on that page personally
nope no difference. not when some of the democratic party members in neogiations had entitlement reforms in the bill. i know the gang of six plan did.
Complete apples and oranges - one changed their view for the fringe of his party, the others shared their view with theirs.
not all of them no. sorry no difference two fringes of both parties including pelosi and reid.
Yea, because things like the Ryan plan regarding Medicare really aren't hazardous to anyone.
if you look at the ryan plan the government garenteed the premium coverage. all that was left was the co-pay for meds and visits.
He's taken tons of 2-3 day trips yes - W still has him beaten on time quite a bit however. And as for limos are you really commenting that much about another 2 limos that cost less than $1m for the pair?
most of his trips were to his home in texas. limo's have gone from 238 to over 400.
And two years is far too slow of a timeframe if they're not actually following the will of their constituency closely.
yeah like the democrats ignored the will of the people for the 4-6 years they held both houses? they should be kicked out as well then i take it?
Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected.
if you want an authoritarian government there are plenty of other countries that over that.
N. korean
china,
cuba,
parts of africa
N vietnam.
lets start listing those economy killing bills that need to be recovered from.
how many did they pass?
you do realize when pelosi and reid took over that things got worse didn't you?
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yea and those companies go out of business. government just demands more tax dollars.
of wait not they don't government wastes are tax dollars because those companies are to big to fail.
Uh, the company's I'm primarily referring to have been in business and continue to be for years in large part due to ridiculously bloated profit margins that keep them afloat with their level of waste.
For the most part the "too big to fails" actually were relatively efficient - not to mention there's not really any government stuff that's equivalent.
please the 300 bucks that someone gets a week is only going to be spent when it has to. these acting like these people are supporting the economy in some way is ridiculous.
not to mention they are costing more than they are getting.
if what you say is true then consumer confidence should be at an all time high since well entitlement spending is at an all time high. yet it isn't consumer confidence is in the barrel.
It's fact that's been proven time and time again - entitlement money by and far goes right back into the economy as spending within two months of it being issued - those that qualify for these programs by and far spend it, they do not save unless put into dire circumstances.
And Consumer Confidence generally lags behind a little bit, about 6-12 months, and really entitlement spending hasn't changed that much in years - in fact the entire time since W left office there hasn't been one of the largest and most consistent - CoL increases for Social Security.
[Not to mention you've gotta factor in everything and look at post inflation dollars, entitlement while larger as a total than W era, due to inflation and the fact that inflation has outpaced it's growth, it's technically lower than W era right now (even lower than Clinton from my math as well, but not seeing something where the adjustment is already done for me, I could be screwing up the math)...]
nope no difference. not when some of the democratic party members in neogiations had entitlement reforms in the bill. i know the gang of six plan did.
Reid, Pelosi and Obama all spoke highly of the Gang of Six version and that they intended to support it if it saw the floor for a vote... (To quote a Reid statement that still sticks in my head from that week: "...the Gang of Six version is how our democracy is supposed to work")
if you look at the ryan plan the government garenteed the premium coverage. all that was left was the co-pay for meds and visits.
You need to look at it again - you were guaranteed it via a refund, and the refund was set to scale at a portion of the inflation of cost (70% I think?) - so if your plan costs went up $1000 a year for your premium this year (which isn't unheard of - our average plan cost for our BC/BS through my work across our 400+ employees was $700/yr increase here before my retirement, average was just shy of 1k/yr increases during my PA days) you're talking about your premium going up $300/year or so assuming the memory of the 70% is the correct number. (I'm pretty sure it's lower if anything though, 60-70% is the range that sticks in my head)
So not only would the poor have to pony up the cost in the first place in order to get the plan (since it's refund based) but it would become a consistently scaling cost for them that would likely outstrip what they can afford if health care costs continue to rise like they do - with nothing in the plan designed to lower health care costs overall.
most of his trips were to his home in texas. limo's have gone from 238 to over 400.
That's still a vacation, and duration is more indicative of how much someone vacations anyhow - look at me versus my parents, I've done 20 locations in the past two years as vacations of sorts, all 1-2 day trips and one 8 day to Disney... their trips were only three locations, a 20 day tour of Europe, a 30 day tour of Asia and the same 8 day in Disney (it was their 50th Anniversary was gonna be a Disney Cruise as well, but alas the economy made us reconsider the extra cost)....
Not many people would say that I vacation more than my parents even though I take many day trips.
And those aren't Presidential limos then - that's the Congressional garage. There's a big difference between Air Force One and the Congressional planes - there's a similar difference between the limo fleets. The Presidential garage neighbors the White House itself and couldn't fit more than a handful of vehicles - the Congressional garage on the other hand is enormous and goes down 3 stories underground last time I toured it, but its been ages. [Still less impressive than how small the NSA building looks compared to how deep underground it goes though!]
yeah like the democrats ignored the will of the people for the 4-6 years they held both houses? they should be kicked out as well then i take it?
Will of the People is supposed to be them representing their constituency appropriately with minor rationalizations to buck what their constituency is saying - it doesn't matter if 70% of Americans say Y when the majority of your constituency is saying X instead for how it's SUPPOSED to work.
It's quite possible some of them ignored their constituency, but to be fair, I'm not aware of those cases outside of a few oddballs during weird cases. (The handful that opposed the Patriot Act for example - but PA was a weird case anyhow)
If you've got some examples of Democrats misrepresenting the will of their constituency, I'd be happy to hear it so I can rail against them as well - most Democrats do a good job of being "wishy-washy" like constituency's generally are however - its hard to have the solidarity the Republicans have had the past dozen or so odd years without some portion ignoring their constituency's will.
if you want an authoritarian government there are plenty of other countries that over that.
N. korean
china,
cuba,
parts of africa
N vietnam.
Pretty sure not a single one of those has what I referenced (in fact, I'm sure of it) - talking about removing the House in preference to polling the interested population on a given matter. We've got the technology to provide the reasoning behind the House without having to be represented in theory.
That's pretty different than having just an executive like you're implying. Radically so in fact.
you do realize when pelosi and reid took over that things got worse didn't you?
And as you constantly quote "things take a while to take hold economically from changes" at least when it comes to positive changes you approve of or negative ones you want to pass the buck on....
For example lets look at the New Deal conversation from the past where you say to ignore the first 8 years of recovery because of the later slump that happened and claim that the 8 years of initial recovery was the effect of something else, and only the much delayed slump was because of the New Deal.
I could give dozens more examples of delays that you've said are to be expected when it supports your cause, yet there's no delay for the things you don't.
Having cake and eating it too as they say. Pick a side that you think is appropriate to defend, don't keep flip flopping on legislation effecting the economy quickly/slowly. Logically I'd agree more with the delayed theorem by and far, especially since all economists state that recoveries are slow - but I could be content with you taking either stance far more than this wishy-washy variant where your stance changes with the party involved.
Uh, the company's I'm primarily referring to have been in business and continue to be for years in large part due to ridiculously bloated profit margins that keep them afloat with their level of waste.
For the most part the "too big to fails" actually were relatively efficient - not to mention there's not really any government stuff that's equivalent.
then be specific most companies can't operate that way and most do not. if they have millions of dollars in waste then they tend to go out of business. that is the model norm for a company in general.
if they were efficient then well they wouldn't have needed bailed out. also i doubt anyone would consider GM or dodge to be efficient and those are just 2 examples.
It's fact that's been proven time and time again - entitlement money by and far goes right back into the economy as spending within two months of it being issued - those that qualify for these programs by and far spend it, they do not save unless put into dire circumstances
Prove it all you want to that doesn't mean that it helps considering that the government spend more issueing the checks than it gets back out of it.
when you are living on bare minimum you only spend when you have to. other than that no you aren't spending.
And Consumer Confidence generally lags behind a little bit, about 6-12 months, and really entitlement spending hasn't changed that much in years - in fact the entire time since W left office there hasn't been one of the largest and most consistent - CoL increases for Social Security.
even with the lag factor consumer confidence has been low for years now even with all of the entitlement spending.
really because there are more women on food stamps than ever before so yeah it has changed quite a bit.
Reid, Pelosi and Obama all spoke highly of the Gang of Six version and that they intended to support it if it saw the floor for a vote
then why did they not tell the members of their party that are against entitlement reform to shut up? because they are spinless. thanks.
You need to look at it again - you were guaranteed it via a refund
no you weren't this was a huge lie put out by the liberal media. no where does it issue a refudn of anything.
The plan would also transform Medicare, the federal healthcare program for citizens over the age of 65, into what Ryan calls a "premium support model" whereby Medicare recipients choose a plan from a list of coverage options and the subsidized payments would go directly to the insurance provider instead of the beneficiary.
Meaning that you have a a'la carte of options to pick from. you choose the level of coverages that you want and the government sends the premium check straight to the insurance company. the only thing that the person is responsible for would be co-pays.
the liberal media and democrats took up the call of a voucher system which was totally false. on top of that the people that are currently on medicare would stay on the old system. only people i think it was 55 or younger would go to the new one.
That's still a vacation
i never said it wasn't but he isn't blowing tax payer money left and right on all of these high cost trips to martha's vineyard, or jet setting his family around the world.
And those aren't Presidential limos then - that's the Congressional garage.
wrong most of them went to clinton which she is under the executive branch.
Will of the People is supposed to be them representing their constituency appropriately with minor rationalizations to buck what their constituency is saying - it doesn't matter if 70% of Americans say Y when the majority of your constituency is saying X instead for how it's SUPPOSED to work.
nice back pedal. if 70% of america which would mean about 70% of the senators and 70% of the house should be kicked out then.
face it the dem's went against the will of the people and their constituency when they were in power. according to your statements they should be kicked out of office.
If you've got some examples of Democrats misrepresenting the will of their constituency
really? stimulus, tarp 2, obamacare, auto bail outs etc the list goes on and on and on.
for someone that claims to be so indepentant you have a myopic view on a lot of issues.
Pretty sure not a single one of those has what I referenced (in fact, I'm sure of it) - talking about removing the House in preference to polling the interested population on a given matter. We've got the technology to provide the reasoning behind the House without having to be represented in theory.
That's pretty different than having just an executive like you're implying. Radically so in fact.
maybe you need to re-read what you wrote.
Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected.
the house should be voted out of existance and the senate should be appointed rather than elected.
that is authoritarian/dictatorship. we are at the whims of the people that appoint these people rather than us being in charge of them. AKA we can vote them out if we don't like them.
if you want that type of system you are more than welcome to move to a country that has that type of government in place. there are plenty to choose from, However i do not believe that you will enjoy it there.
Quote from For example lets look at the New Deal conversation from the past where you say to ignore the first 8 years of recovery because of the later slump that happened and claim that the 8 years of initial recovery was the effect of something else, and only the much delayed slump was because of the New Deal.[/quote »
i never said to ignore the first 8 years of recovery. that is a lie. i have said that the new deal policies which more and more economists are signing onto extended the depression by 10 years.
there was nothing in the new deal that ramped up the economy. creating work does not create jobs.
it was the demand for US industrial strength by europe and america entering the war that really got america back on it's feet. nothing from the new deal.
i have stated that keyne's theory of economics has never had a real life attempt where it has worked.
yep there is a delay but not 6 years.
[quote]Pick a side that you think is appropriate to defend, don't keep flip flopping on legislation effecting the economy quickly/slowly.
sorry i am not john kerry i don't need to flip flop on issues.
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[quoteFor example lets look at the New Deal conversation from the past where you say to ignore the first 8 years of recovery because of the later slump that happened and claim that the 8 years of initial recovery was the effect of something else, and only the much delayed slump was because of the New Deal.
i never said to ignore the first 8 years of recovery. that is a lie. i have said that the new deal policies which more and more economists are signing onto extended the depression by 10 years.
there was nothing in the new deal that ramped up the economy. creating work does not create jobs.
it was the demand for US industrial strength by europe and america entering the war that really got america back on it's feet. nothing from the new deal.
i have stated that keyne's theory of economics has never had a real life attempt where it has worked.
yep there is a delay but not 6 years.
sorry i am not john kerry i don't need to flip flop on issues.[/QUOTE]
Contraction in the money supply combined with wage controls was a major part of the double dip during the Great Depression. The New Deal took cheap credit and put it to work on infrastructure projects that have basically expanded business function, basically the production-possibilitites frontier was expanded and helped to increase employment with a multiplicative effect on future economic growth through the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
Now, by some estimations we weren't out of the Great Depression until the mid 1950's because of the devastated Eurozone and the subsequent recoveries that took time to work and really kicked into gear during the 60's and 70's.
The biggest aspect of the New Deal was the SEC, FDIC, Bretton Woods, and Glass Steagell. That created the economic framework for us for about 2 generations until the mid 90's whenever we started to muck with the regulatory framework. Spending is only half of the equation, as regulating is the other half of the equation when we start talking about government inefficiencies.
A large sector of our economic growth has actually been in the field of finance, not so much in production but rather flipping around pieces of paper in new ways. The interconnectivity of the whole system is basically mind boggling, and is a part of the reason why Keynes was right. The "animal spirits" of the economy such as pessimism work both ways in business, it can be anti-business businesses or anti-government businesses. During the crisis and subsequent aftermath, it was more of an "anti-business business" aroma depending on your industry or more particular the classical anti-banker attitude.
The gist with the Tea Party and spending cuts is that if we cut to the regulatory framework and stamp and weaken the financial sector, we allow for people that are heavy in mathematics to go into fields such as manufacturing, engineering, science, or business where real jobs are started, sustained, and proliferated.
I'd also like to know which economists you're referring to by "more and more," because by my readings over the last few years they seem to be either synthesizing Keynes with other more conservative economists or are full on Keynesian.
The main thing here is to look at Japan and Chile. Chile had a system where it used a surplus of savings to kick start their own economy during a down turn, this has been much applauded. Japan on the other hand during the lost decade went way too far with infrastructure building, had a demographics pop, and entered a liquidity trap that prolonged their Lost Decade.
However, we're far closer to Chile in terms of stable demographics and a more liberal immigration policy. Equally, we do need more water in the Southern areas where there is now drought and a rising population. We have several areas where we could dig or redig canals to increase trade, as well as increase the efficiency of our electrical grid against EMP attacks or solar radiation, increase efficiency, and put people back to work and keep companies open against future oil shocks.
Now for the Great Depression, what helped to prolong that were the currency wars that were prolonged by France, as well as the fascist countries closing off trade to become "self reliant." It wasn't Smoot–Hawley Tariff at all, and in part SHT was in reaction to other tariffs.
then be specific most companies can't operate that way and most do not. if they have millions of dollars in waste then they tend to go out of business. that is the model norm for a company in general.
Most either do have millions of dollars of waste or millions of dollars of administrative costs.
Almost all of retail is built upon a high profit margin + high waste market for crying out loud. Those Prada shoes your wife wants costs Macy's about $200 to stock but then they sell as many as they can for $800 which isn't many, but enough.
if they were efficient then well they wouldn't have needed bailed out. also i doubt anyone would consider GM or dodge to be efficient and those are just 2 examples.
As I stated before, I'm not referring to the bailout companies. (and even most of those didn't have waste/admin cost issues, they had poor sales)
There's companies out there like the health care industry that are 40%ish between their waste/fraud and admin costs - that's ridiculous. (And something Medicare/Medicaid even with their "rampant fraud" manage to handle at closer to 25%!)
Prove it all you want to that doesn't mean that it helps considering that the government spend more issueing the checks than it gets back out of it.
when you are living on bare minimum you only spend when you have to. other than that no you aren't spending.
Right but you spend all of it - and you know that old "trickle down" economics of Reagan's that some people doubt exists? Consumer spending
works the same way, except it's absolute and easy to follow since it's all self sustaining with no real possibility for someone to halt things.
Bob gets $100 he spends that $100 getting groceries, that grocery store after seeing enough people in Bob's situation added to their customer base needs to hire another cashier and increase purchases a bit which creates two additional levels of thresh the cashier (basically a GOTO 10 since it starts a new tree of economic thresh) and the suppliers that then have to hire more workers and supplies to create more products to supply the grocery....
And it goes on and on and on.
even with the lag factor consumer confidence has been low for years now even with all of the entitlement spending.
really because there are more women on food stamps than ever before so yeah it has changed quite a bit.
Consumer Confidence index only deals with non-essential retail - food stamps will never touch it - so that one is a moot point.
And as I stated, if you actually factor in CoL changes from inflation entitlement spending has been actually going down. While my grocery bill has gone up nearly 40% a month in the past two years, I've seen zero change in my Social Security personally as one such example.
then why did they not tell the members of their party that are against entitlement reform to shut up? because they are spinless. thanks.
Why didn't they tell them to vote on a bill that never got brought to the floor for a vote at the discretion of the Republican Speaker of the House? It's a relative waste of time to gerrymander for votes for something that isn't actually being voted upon.
And yes, they did speak out against some of the reform options presented because they were draconian in degree - one of them was suggesting raising retirement age to 75 for example, which might be a reasonable eventual target - but is a heck of a jump from the current 67 to do all at once as it was presented.
Remember agreeing with a general concept isn't the same as agreeing with all forms of said concept.
no you weren't this was a huge lie put out by the liberal media. no where does it issue a refudn of anything.
Sorry, it's a voucher not a refund - it's still set at a portion of the cost of a policy however. And considering Medicare costs $141/mo currently for all but those under the $767/mo income threshold in nine states, and full cost for all the rest, the voucher which would start out at 80% of the policy cost would start out as a boon more than likely. However with the 60% (I've checked it now) growth formula based off inflation it would turn bad in just a few years of inflation.
Especially when you keep in mind that medical costs have been outpacing inflation by over double it's a poor index to base it upon. Although hopefully one that would be sensibly be caught as such and adjusted.
Meaning that you have a a'la carte of options to pick from. you choose the level of coverages that you want and the government sends the premium check straight to the insurance company. the only thing that the person is responsible for would be co-pays.
And their portion of the premium payment it wouldn't be 100%.
the liberal media and democrats took up the call of a voucher system which was totally false. on top of that the people that are currently on medicare would stay on the old system. only people i think it was 55 or younger would go to the new one.
Kaiser Health which is hardly liberal (they were one of McCain's biggest supporters - and helped rally people up for the anti-HCR bill rallies) was reporting it as an in advance voucher - and yes the new system would be delayed to go into effect for people, that doesn't mean a lousy plan that will effect you but not me is any more sensible for me to support however.
i never said it wasn't but he isn't blowing tax payer money left and right on all of these high cost trips to martha's vineyard, or jet setting his family around the world.
I've yet to see a vacation/trip that wasn't paid for or business related myself outside of the loosely non-business trip he footed to deal with the birth certificate nonsense.
He's been a paid/invited guest for many of the trips - now the one's I'm sure of are a fraction of his total trips, but I've yet to see anything concrete via simple searches that shows him or the Feds paying for his trips to any large length.
wrong most of them went to clinton which she is under the executive branch.
First of all technically they wouldn't be "for Obama" then as you stated earlier - and Congressional garage is still where the cabinet and other executive staff get their limos from.
Presidential garage is exclusively for the President, invited guests of state and Secret Service for daily use.
nice back pedal. if 70% of america which would mean about 70% of the senators and 70% of the house should be kicked out then.
face it the dem's went against the will of the people and their constituency when they were in power. according to your statements they should be kicked out of office.
Once again you miss the forest through the damn trees - the problem is House members misrepresenting their constituency (Senators technically aren't supposed to directly represent their people) - if I'm in District 2 and the House member from District 3 votes in contrast to my feelings it doesn't matter.
You're talking about universal opinion with how you're trying to take what I said, if 98% of America is against something but 100% of your district is, you should vote for it with how the House is SUPPOSED to work.
I'm more than welcome to hear of cases of others misrepresenting their districts in the House however. It's not a topic that gets delved into by the news very often though, only ones I know of I had to piece together myself from looking at a districts polls against voting record.
really? stimulus, tarp 2, obamacare, auto bail outs etc the list goes on and on and on.
for someone that claims to be so indepentant you have a myopic view on a lot of issues.
Not sure where the polls fell between districts and their voters outside of locally but for the "will of the people" being against it, our local House members voted appropriately in all of the above cases except.
For example on TARP2: We had 2 districts here that were polling against it, and their two Republican reps voted it down - the other MD districts were all for it, and everyone I've crosschecked had voted for it.
That's appropriate representation.
The House is not supposed to care about national polls, they're supposed to care about how their district polls.
maybe you need to re-read what you wrote.
the house should be voted out of existance and the senate should be appointed rather than elected.
that is authoritarian/dictatorship. we are at the whims of the people that appoint these people rather than us being in charge of them. AKA we can vote them out if we don't like them.
You need to re-reread what I wrote clearly - I was saying voting the House out of existence was MORE preferable than what a certain Republican Presidential hopeful has been saying about overturning the 17th Amendment to make Senators an appointed position again - which is absolute lunacy.
I was condemning the latter idea, not suggesting it. Thus the whole "...makes more sense than..." part.
I like cheeseburgers, but can't stand hamburgers - under your reading of the House/Senate comment I made earlier, you'd take that to mean I love both cheeseburgers and hamburgers. [And it's just a hypothetical to prove your misreading - although I do strongly prefer to have cheese a plain burger is still good]
if you want that type of system you are more than welcome to move to a country that has that type of government in place. there are plenty to choose from, However i do not believe that you will enjoy it there.
A true Democracy with technology allowing the citizens to vote on every subject brought for legislation with a Legislative elected body to vote rationally on subjects over public will, an Executive to make quick and final decisions on matters and a Judicial to make sure things don't get too far off track from their original intent?
Pretty sure that place doesn't exist outside of a dreamscape - but I'd be happy to be directed to it.
i never said to ignore the first 8 years of recovery. that is a lie. i have said that the new deal policies which more and more economists are signing onto extended the depression by 10 years.
More and more? I've seen one news contributor in the past 4 years start preaching as much, and he's the child of another anti-Keynes economist, so it's not particularly surprising.
there was nothing in the new deal that ramped up the economy. creating work does not create jobs.
I explained above what giving people that are broke money does economically, read that again if it hasn't sunk in yet.
it was the demand for US industrial strength by europe and america entering the war that really got america back on it's feet. nothing from the new deal.
While likely a factor in things without an alternate reality hopping machine you've got no means to prove that. With or without Keynes things would have been better or worse - what we have to judge upon is expert opinion, which is by and far pro-Keynes/New Deal.
Sometimes expert opinion is proved wrong in the longrun in things that are hard to evaluate in the short term (world being flat was a common expert opinion for a long time, and took centuries to prove - even though something as simple as the earth's curvature can prove it now) - but often things progess as expert's expect.
i have stated that keyne's theory of economics has never had a real life attempt where it has worked.
Only when you attribute all the good to other coincidental factors happening at the same time - which while possibly accurate - are impossible to prove in the current sample size, especially with something with as many moving parts as an economy.
Under normal rationalization something like 9/11 shouldn't have boosted the economy at all, but in the long run it did due to a host of other factors and increased public and private sector job growth.
yep there is a delay but not 6 years.
sorry i am not john kerry i don't need to flip flop on issues.
I can see two flip-flops in just the above post within the post...
Contraction in the money supply combined with wage controls was a major part of the double dip during the Great Depression. The New Deal took cheap credit and put it to work on infrastructure projects that have basically expanded business function, basically the production-possibilitites frontier was expanded and helped to increase employment with a multiplicative effect on future economic growth through the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
yet none of them actually helped the economy nor helped the depression. the US continued to suffer even though the massive amount of government spending that went on.
The demand for US industrial base was the reason we got out of the depression plus the fact that there was a huge drain on the US work force as most of the men went to war.
So there were a ton of job openings created as well as a demand for a manufacturing base.
Most either do have millions of dollars of waste or millions of dollars of administrative costs.
Almost all of retail is built upon a high profit margin + high waste market for crying out loud. Those Prada shoes your wife wants costs Macy's about $200 to stock but then they sell as many as they can for $800 which isn't many, but enough.
every company has overhead but that doesn't mean that it is waste. if you don't know the difference you should just say so.
overhead is factored into their pricing structure. i had a 10-20% markup just for overhead alone.
As I stated before, I'm not referring to the bailout companies.
so we only pick the companies that you choose? don't think so.
Bob gets $100 he spends that $100 getting groceries, that grocery store after seeing enough people in Bob's situation added to their customer base needs to hire another cashier and increase purchases a bit which creates two additional levels of thresh the cashier (basically a GOTO 10 since it starts a new tree of economic thresh) and the suppliers that then have to hire more workers and supplies to create more products to supply the grocery....
I am not going to hire more cashiers unless i need to, and no technically i can almost get rid of those since places are switch to automated check outs.
as long as my current staff can handle the load i don't need to hire people. bob spending 100 bucks isn't really helping me out. since that money will have to go back to the government at some point in time usually with interest involved.
Sorry, it's a voucher
Wrong, wrong, wrong. the person involved never saw a dime of money. it went straight from the government to the insurance company. there was not a credit or voucher paid to the person.
voucher which would start out at 80% of the policy cost would start out as a boon more than likely.
according to all sources i have seen the government would cover a premium up to 8000 dollars. the higher the income level then the lower it scales down. it would then scale to inflation after that.
And their portion of the premium payment it wouldn't be 100%.
depends on the premium payment. the average premium paymentw ould be about 8K. so if you picked a plan less than that then you wouldn't have a payment at all.
First of all technically they wouldn't be "for Obama" then as you stated earli
i said executive branch.
Once again you miss the forest through the damn trees - the problem is House members misrepresenting their constituency
yep and when 70% of america is against something do you not realize that well it would be close to 70% of the people in the house?
before 2010 election both my rep and my senator is represented our district which is pretty conservative. so does that mean they should lose thier jobs? ol wait one did in 2010 and the other will in 2012.
You're talking about universal opinion with how you're trying to take what I said, if 98% of America is against something but 100% of your district is, you should vote for it with how the House is SUPPOSED to work.
That universal opinion consists of people in your district. We are not a true democracy we are a republic. we elect people to office that are suppose to have our interests. if they don't then we vote them out the next election.
which is what happened in 2010. Democrats got slaughtered because they failed to represent their people and their districts. if the republicans do the same then in 2012 they will lose as well. that is why house members only get 2 years. so that they are suppose to stay close to the people they are representing.
You need to re-reread what I wrote clearly
nope i posted exactly what you wrote word for word.
I was saying voting the House out of existence was MORE preferable than what a certain Republican Presidential hopeful has been saying about overturning the 17th Amendment to make Senators an appointed position again - which is absolute lunacy.
that is not what you said i posted exactly what you said. if you meant something else then you should be clearer in what you are trying to say i cannot read your mind.
certain republican presidential hopefuls means as much as that straw poll in iowa.
I've seen one news contributor in the past 4 years start preaching as much, and he's the child of another anti-Keynes economist, so it's not particularly surprising. what we have to judge upon is expert opinion, which is by and far pro-Keynes/New Deal.
they can be that all they want the real world says differently. the new deal showed tons of money being spent and overall unemployement remain the same. overall wages were stagnant due to salary freezes placed by the government as part of the new deal.
today we have billions and trillions of dollars being spent and unemployement has shown little movement except up.
Under normal rationalization something like 9/11 shouldn't have boosted the economy at all,
It didn't job growth was curbed for about 3 years. it wasn't until mid 2003-2004 that job growth and economic growth started happening again
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every company has overhead but that doesn't mean that it is waste. if you don't know the difference you should just say so.
overhead is factored into their pricing structure. i had a 10-20% markup just for overhead alone.
The waste that I'm referring to in many industries is complete waste - spoiled product and theft as examples - and regardless overhead is still a form of waste, since it's just inflating pricing to cover loss which is often from waste of some form.
so we only pick the companies that you choose? don't think so.
When I'm referring to normal business on all sorts of levels not just a handful of too big to fail, it sure is - especially when one of the few industries that doesn't have substantial waste is financials outside of odd blips is on that list.
I am not going to hire more cashiers unless i need to, and no technically i can almost get rid of those since places are switch to automated check outs.
You do realize on average a trained cashier handles 5 times the volume of an automated teller and the automated cashiers run nearly $150k to set up the first POS and $50k for each additional, not even covering recurring costs for repair/etc. right?
And due to the problems involved in each the industry standard is one extra low level management on call per 4-5 automated cashiers - not to mention most groceries also still like to offer baggers and other assistance for the shoppers - and the more people that check out the more staffing that is required for cart return/etc/etc/etc.
as long as my current staff can handle the load i don't need to hire people. bob spending 100 bucks isn't really helping me out. since that money will have to go back to the government at some point in time usually with interest involved.
When you're talking about another 100 Bob's a day you sure do.
And specifically for "entitlement based cash" since it largely comes in the first two weeks of the month for most types it's VERY notable in most low-end retail, did you know that Wal-Mart for example has nearly 50% more staffing for the 3rd through the 12th of each month for example?
Grocery is even more exacerbated by it, although my secondary departments didn't get impacted (i.e. coffee/specialty tea and cheese) all the primary departments required twice the staffing for the first weeks of the month. (I wasn't as precise to micromanage it down like Wal-Mart though, I did 1st-14th as doubled staffing compared to the rest of the month unless a family holiday month was on the way)
Wrong, wrong, wrong. the person involved never saw a dime of money. it went straight from the government to the insurance company. there was not a credit or voucher paid to the person.
It's strange that a group that was lobbying against the HCR bill and pro-McCain would make that error.
according to all sources i have seen the government would cover a premium up to 8000 dollars. the higher the income level then the lower it scales down. it would then scale to inflation after that.
Sounds about right - but not at 1:1 with inflation and health care costs have been rising at nearly 2:1 compared to inflation anyhow - setting it up for the insurance companies or the people to take a huge bite in the rear after a decade or so.
i said executive branch.
The only limos under his control as your statement implied is the Presidential Garage, and while the secondary attaches do get provided limos - theirs aren't their "property" or what-have-you. The ones they use are legislative limos technically speaking, the two branches are intertwined on some secondary items like limos. [Shouldn't be surprising even without a good civics background considering everyone knows what the VP's primary purpose is after all - he also gets his personal limos from the Congressional Garage BTW, since I only referenced the Cabinet earlier]
I'd imagine he can't even write requisitions to increase the size of the Congressional limo pool after seeing the fit that the Democrats through a couple years back over W trying to lend out some of the Presidential planes out to Congress to use.
yep and when 70% of america is against something do you not realize that well it would be close to 70% of the people in the house?
There's a huge difference from general polls and actual polling - look at Obama's election as an example - electoral college wise (i.e. local district polling) he demolished McCain pretty handedly, but overall the actual percentage was pretty dicey with how close it was.
It's quite possible to have something like a 70% portion against something overall and yet have regions with 60-70% support FOR the item and other regions with support in the range of single digits.
There's a reason we have the electoral college and each state gets equal Senators and districts aren't necessarily the same population after all.
Republicans are supposed to feel strongly about avoiding the tyranny of the majority mentioned in the founding of our nation - why would you even think for a second that is a good idea?
That universal opinion consists of people in your district. We are not a true democracy we are a republic. we elect people to office that are suppose to have our interests. if they don't then we vote them out the next election.
The problem is that when the 2 year term was created that was only six months of actual legislation that they had to muck with things and during their 9 months a year at home it was basically impossible to ignore hobnobbing with the neighbors and getting opinions on current legislation.
Whereas politicians today at times have a bill a week with nearly 40 weeks in session - and almost ignoring their constituency during their down time.
Things are apples and oranges since then. No one could sanely say that the Founding Father's ever envisioned the current level of rapidity and lack of time with their constituents that occurs today.
nope i posted exactly what you wrote word for word.
You sure as heck did not my quote C/P'ed so literally word for word besides the bolding I've added to show an important bit: "Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected."
Your mangled quote of me: "the house should be voted out of existance and the senate should be appointed rather than elected."
PS - That person I was referring to supporting axing the 17th Amendment? Mr. Rick Perry.
You said new people were supporting it - Tyler Cowen has been doing economics talk for as long as I can remember, and the two on the Australian paper have been doing it nearly as long as Ben Stein.
These aren't old dogs turning around, they're old dogs that are just barking more loudly about things again and barked about them before.
"More and more" as I was repeating from your statement implies there is new blood coming into their fold, and I have not seen it, nor have what you provided evidence it since these are all Reagan-era or before for when they became active in economic theory.
they can be that all they want the real world says differently. the new deal showed tons of money being spent and overall unemployement remain the same. overall wages were stagnant due to salary freezes placed by the government as part of the new deal.
today we have billions and trillions of dollars being spent and unemployement has shown little movement except up.
If you have a net gain of $0 at the end of your year personally, does that mean nothing in your portfolio of assets was successful at all? There's a reason why microeconomies like businesses actually track all their gains and losses to maximize and minimize what works and does not work effectively. Unfortunately when you're talking about macroeconomics the scale makes it impossible to weigh out any single factor without completely freezing the economy to run a proper test, which would be messy and thus will never happen without an alternate reality machine.
Or for another analogy - my wife's been complaining to me about gaining 3 pounds in the past month while doing a more strict exercise regimen and having a much healthier diet due to her ulcer's diet restrictions - since her weight is going the wrong way, would you say that the exercise and diet improvements are doing nothing for her? Or is the reality more likely that the medications that she's been taking for her ulcer that can cause an increase in water weight generating additional weight at a higher rate than her exercise and diet - and that once that extra mitigating factor is gone results will be as expected? An economy is similar with a push and pull of factors going the right and wrong way except instead of just 5-10 factors to deal with you've got hundreds - from consumer confidence, to the effects of tariffs and local taxes, etc.
Or TL;DR for those paragraphs: Just because something didn't reverse a problem doesn't mean it wouldn't have been worse without it.
It didn't job growth was curbed for about 3 years. it wasn't until mid 2003-2004 that job growth and economic growth started happening again
And when it started pulling up strongly was when the DHS and affiliates started receiving boku bucks as a result of the Patriot Act that came from 9/11 - in the longrun it was an economic stimulus - in exchange for some short term economic numbing.
yet none of them actually helped the economy nor helped the depression. the US continued to suffer even though the massive amount of government spending that went on.
The demand for US industrial base was the reason we got out of the depression plus the fact that there was a huge drain on the US work force as most of the men went to war.
So there were a ton of job openings created as well as a demand for a manufacturing base.
I am just curious, to you what is the definition of "helped the economy"? Cause if you mean all the suffering ended and we started to see rampant growth with low unemployment then yeah, it didn't "help" but if you mean, like everyone else in the world does, that it means "reduced suffering and caused growth that otherwise wouldn't have occurred during a liquidity trap" then yes, the efforts of the New Deal helped.
This chart, http://www.housingbubblebust.com/GDP/Depression.html easily shows that while FDR was President, there was recovery except for the when they switched to austerity measures which causes another crunch.
Woah, slow down there big fella. Those irrascable Tea-Party cronies are how many representatives? Oh, I think about 79. (60 in caucus) Less than 80 reps out of how many in the House of Representatives? Oh that's right, 438. So you're telling me that the apparent non-crony (level headed) 192 Democrats and the remaining 161 level non-crony (level headed) Republicans in the house were somehow held hostage by less than 80 Freshsmen? You've got to be either a political tool, ignorant or just baiting to believe that line of fantasy.
Who's the Majority Leader? Eric Cantor. Cantor wants Boehner's job. Cantor has allied himself with the Tea Party. He wasn't elected by the Tea Party but he's hitched his wagon to their ideals since being threatened by them last election. He's ambitious, smart, and willing to do what it takes to advance his own position.
Cantor has inserted himself into a very powerful position among the House Republicans and he holds a lot of sway over both the Tea Partiers and the rest. He controls which way the votes go because the Republican leadership is top-down. Boehner knows that and knows he must work with Cantor, no matter how extreme Cantor goes.
They are reflective of their districts. They fight for their seat every two years and keep getting re-elected. As much as I have a polar opposite viewpoint on how this government should act from theirs, they are elected to their position. They didn't cheat an election to get there. As such, they must vote their heart which should be in line with their constituants position.
Here's the rub. The Tea Partiers are new to Congress. They energized a motivated base during an off-year election cycle. They didn't beat the odds so much as stacked the odds for themselves. Note I'm not saying they cheated; I'm saying the environment in which they were elected was very conducive to them.
I love the core message of the Tea Party: the federal government is too large. What I don't agree with are their willingness to cut off the country at its knees and their position that compromise is a bad thing. Sticking to your principles is fine in theory, but you can't take an absolute position every time or nothing will get done. "My way or the highway" has never worked in Washington and insisting that everyone play by those rules is dangerous. They have shown they are willing to choose the greater of two evils because their option isn't on the table.
I apologize to you if you feel my rhetoric is harsh. I just have little respect for fanaticism and blind allegiance to idealism. Politicians should be elected for their nuance and willingness to listen. The Tea Party representatives have so far shown neither of those qualities and instead have made themselves out to me as a bunch of spoiled children who threaten to take the ball and go home if we don't play by their rules.
Here is the reason that simply pumping money into the economy doesn't work. The government can only get money from 3 sources.
1) It can tax its citizens. Our government is not taxing as high as it could, but high taxes reduce standard of living because more money goes to government rather than citizens. Taxing one segment of the population (the segment that controls prices) simply results in those taxes going back into the prices which causes prices to rise and more government aid to be required. The wealthy take thier profit and then the rest gets taxed back into the slush pool to pay for the ever increasing costs of necesseties. The poor never get ahead in this cycle.
2) It can borrow from other foreign soverigns. Borrowing works for a time, but this money MUST be paid back in times of plenty. I'm all for the Bush tax cuts in principle, but with rampant debt and deficits, plus new spending bills the tax cuts were a mistake. Tax reform is needed, not just cuts. If it borrows from foreign governments it can also be subject to thier demands. This is a long running tactic to bring a powerful government into servatude. (See British in India and the Opium Wars)
3) It can print the money it needs. This goes back into the economy resulting in price increases as everyone can and must pay more for goods. This scenario is worse than #1 because there is no wicking effect of Taxes, so the wealth gap gets enormous, and those in the middle become very polarized either by becomming wealthy (producer) or by becomming poor (wage earner).
Our government has been doing a combination of the 3 for the last 100 years.
The poor only get out of poverty by producing something of value, whether a good or service in which the value doesn't change. IE the price goes up along with any increases in cost. Our education system is designed to produce two things. 1) employees - who don't know how to effectively market thier services so they undersell them to corporations who profit at thier expense. 2) Soldiers. Which contributes to our bloated military budget.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
Here is the reason that simply pumping money into the economy doesn't work. The government can only get money from 3 sources.
1) It can tax its citizens. Our government is not taxing as high as it could, but high taxes reduce standard of living because more money goes to government rather than citizens. Taxing one segment of the population (the segment that controls prices) simply results in those taxes going back into the prices which causes prices to rise and more government aid to be required. The wealthy take thier profit and then the rest gets taxed back into the slush pool to pay for the ever increasing costs of necesseties. The poor never get ahead in this cycle.
2) It can borrow from other foreign soverigns. Borrowing works for a time, but this money MUST be paid back in times of plenty. I'm all for the Bush tax cuts in principle, but with rampant debt and deficits, plus new spending bills the tax cuts were a mistake. Tax reform is needed, not just cuts. If it borrows from foreign governments it can also be subject to thier demands. This is a long running tactic to bring a powerful government into servatude. (See British in India and the Opium Wars)
3) It can print the money it needs. This goes back into the economy resulting in price increases as everyone can and must pay more for goods. This scenario is worse than #1 because there is no wicking effect of Taxes, so the wealth gap gets enormous, and those in the middle become very polarized either by becomming wealthy (producer) or by becomming poor (wage earner).
Our government has been doing a combination of the 3 for the last 100 years.
The poor only get out of poverty by producing something of value, whether a good or service in which the value doesn't change. IE the price goes up along with any increases in cost. Our education system is designed to produce two things. 1) employees - who don't know how to effectively market thier services so they undersell them to corporations who profit at thier expense. 2) Soldiers. Which contributes to our bloated military budget.
You do realize that interchanging a few words and dropping #3 off the list (well normally, TARP was an exception to the rule of course) that you could interchange it to say business doesn't work under the same logic, right?
And even then for manufacturing things "printing money" by overproducing product to create a glut on retailers that are overbuying is a frequent thing recently - so many products drop off nearly 50% 3-6 months after release these days outside of specialty retail, it's ridiculous.
Not to mention some of the statements imply there's some sort of altruism to hiring and that these people with the hiring controls would be hiring if they just had a little more money - yet with over $1T sitting unused in the coffers of the corporate world right now that is being unused, I find that a weak argument.
$1T is enough to make plenty of hires to drop unemployment at least a handful of %'s if they so deemed at least a single percent if they just wanted to demonstrate a 1% improvement or what-have-you.
It takes a lot of time and money to minimize your taxes on your own, and paying the right people costs quite a bit.
Unless they go after the EIC or child credits, I do agree with that, but I've always maintained a position that Eliminating things like corporate welfare is not equal to a tax increase dispite the fact that it would cause those people to pay more taxes.
The reason I have a problem with the whole "pay your fair share" arguement is that it implies that all rich people pay less taxes than the poor (who next to no taxes or negative taxes due to refundable credits) so they aren't pulling thier own weight, when in reality they are just trying to reduce their tax burden.
I guess its a matter of calling it tax reform rather than openly calling for class warfare by asking for a 3+% increase in the nominal rate of the wealthiest.
Think of it this way, the biggest deviations from linear with regard to income tax are for those making less than $8000 a year (single) or $16,000 a year (married filing jointly), and those making more than $165,000 a year (single) or $200,000 a year (married filing jointly). One group can get enough deductions in a set dollar amount to wipe out how much taxes they are paying, and one group can afford to hire the best people to give them the advice they need to minimize their tax payments. It also illustrates how much the super-wealthy do not have a fair tax burden to pay (they pay as much as someone making a dime on the dollar in income taxes).
Simply put, the wealthiest 3% and the poorest 16% are both underpaying on their taxes but that top 3% represents a lot more lost federal revenue in taxes than that poorest 16%.
And I still don't understand how we don't have tax rates determined by a function instead of brackets. Or at least a series of functions.
It depends entirely how you see it - when you realize that without many of the public services available most of those wealthy folks wouldn't have any reasonable amount of workers available to them and then suddenly their portion looks relatively different.
Just because the direct beneficiary of something is assisted doesn't mean there isn't a "trickle down" effect in how it helps others.
For an RL example: Hunt Valley, MD when I was opening our most recent location before my retirement literally doubled the business permit costs incurred for a town center based grocery with our square footage which initially was a huge bite in the rear for me since it screwed up my payroll numbers I'd projected and been working with - fortunately though they were using those dollars to complete the light rail system up to Hunt Valley which when it was completed shortly after we opened suddenly we had three times the applicants, asking for lower salaries and more customers. (although $/customer dropped slightly, our customer base went up close to 50%)
Would our owner or even any of we management there use the light rail to make the portions we ended up footing of the cost? Of course not - but did it benefit us indirectly? Immensely so.
(and yes, management opted out of our pay raises that year voluntarily across the board to help with the costs in advance - we were allowed to double up next review though [or at least I think so, was scheduled for early summer - my disability really started taking me out of work the Easter before]
It becomes very hard to have employees and customers without roads and other public amenities that don't directly benefit them more than anyone else in a myopic view - and a very large portion of wealthy people need such things in order to stay in business.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
They benefited from that rail too. Your boss might have seen a 50% increase, but they saw a 100% increase. Jobless to Job. Your boss was paying thier taxes anyway in thier paychecks.
The one thing that stood out to me in this story is "government raised the permit fees making it harder to start a business".
The point is that we already have a progressive tax scale. I have yet to see any argument why it needs to be MORE progressive. Why should we take a scale (not real numbers) from 5-10-15-20-25-30 to 5-10-15-20-30-40 rather than 8-13-18-23-28-33? People don't put value on what they don't pay for. Every time I hear someone say "the government should do something" I ask them if they would pay 10% more of thier income to make it happen. They shut up or regurgitate "tax the rich" IE anyone but me.
And keep in mind the actuality of tax rates dictates that with deductions it's not actually progressive, more of a bell curve - which is illogical.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Though, we wouldn't have to tax the rich as much if they hired more people and paid them more...
Not everyone agrees on those things as the role of the federal government.
Again I will repeat that people don't place value on what they don't pay for.
Wealth disparity is getting larger because the poor don't have enough education on how to get themselves out of poverty. Government only has limited means to fix that. Hand outs only make this problem worse, esp when the taxes collected don't come close to the money being distributed.
Except that they do. The people who complain the loudest wanting small government are also the first people to complain when they feel the government needs to step in and isn't.
And I will agree with you, hence, we need to put people back to work and contributing to society.
Do you consider Pell Grants to be just government hand outs? Cause I know plenty of people who rely on them and are thankful for them. Education is a problem for poor people yes, but that is mostly because they come from poor environments, I think one thing that the government should do is start more urban revitalization projects.
yes because it has nothing to do with the fact that federal spending has increased 40% over the past 6 years or so. about 20% under bush and about 20% under obama.
that is almost the entire deficit right there. in which the federal government functioned perfectly fine before those major increases.
No they shut it down because they realize that more taxes = more spending. the tax increases proposed would not have gone to pay down the deficit or the debt it would have gone to more social programs and other waste.
why should the american people foot the irresponsibility of government? we do that now. maybe just maybe if government showed they were responsible with what they have then people would view taxes differently.
they are not responsible.
The dem's did the same thing. they threw a fit over actually trying to reign in bloated government social programs. the pitched one fit and a half and refused to compromise they treated it like an STD. only it wasn't the fringe of the democratic party it was the whole democratic party.
It goes both ways.
I didn't see pelosi or Reid doing that either so i guess they are just as spineless.
when you are elected by the people to on the platform that you want to reign in government spending and are elected to try and do that then that is what you do. you leave it up to the people in your district to decide if you are doing a good enough job.
if you are then you will get re-elected if not then you will lose.
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About 15% of that was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and related secondary attachments to the DHS - are you suggesting that we just throw the DHS program away?
After all, things ran pretty smoothly without the DHS for a very long time.
This is nonsense that can easily be flipped the other way too - "They just shut down any tax increases because they realized that less spending can create the need for less taxes allowing tax rates to be further cut while not bothering with the deficit.
It's poor theorycraft that requires partisan blinders to believe it would actually be the intended outcome.
Less administrative costs + waste (as a total of both, since admin costs help curb waste they're sane to lump together) in Medicare than in privately owned insurance companies, far more cost efficient law enforcement and defense services than offered privately.
Heck even the DARPA backbone to the Internet is more stable than the MAE's that are privately handled.
I'd really like to start seeing some solid examples of irresponsibility that saliently shows a wide reaching problem.
Right because times when the economy is in the toilet and more people need social programs to assist them it makes sense to cut back the hardest on those programs.
Makes a ton of sense to cut those programs when finding a job to get off them is difficult.... once unemployment is back under control where those people could have a reasonable chance at getting back to work is another story though, but we're not there yet.
They've not said that Tea Party demands are hazardous? Do you just immediately ignore anything they say? Because about a full third of the quotes I've seen from them have had some level of condemnation or at least implication of the Tea Party being a bad force in politics.
And multiple of those constituencies have been polled with 60-70% supporting some sort of resolution including all factors - taxation, various cuts, etc - whatever it takes to get it under control.
Remember our political system is supposed to be a REPRESENTATIVE Democracy - every single one of those that are voting out of line with how their constituency feels should be subject to immediate removal IMO - its personally disgusting to me that House members aren't subject to recall - two years may sound fast, but a ton of damage can be done by those ignoring the wishes of their constituents.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
the DHS is a clustered mess of an organization. half the time depending on who is in charge it can't tell which way is up.
as i said government spending has increased about 40% cutting back on that would almost take care of the budget if we go back to 2004-2005 spending levels.
what is non-sense is the constant push for tax increases when you keep raising your budget levels from the previous year. how about you start by cutting back on the spending vs forcing the public to pay for government lack of control.
try reading a GAO (government accountability office) report sometime. Recently they have been packed full with billions of dollars in government waste and where the budgets can be cut etc...
waste and abuse run through the entire system.
not when those programs are eating up the majority of the budget. if you want to get your spending under control then you have to look at what is the biggest factors.
entitlement and the military budget.
so don't cry at me with the fact that people are don't want their taxes raised when they are already working the butts off the way that it is.
more money taken out of the system is less money for people and individuals which means even less economic growth. that is a fact and there is no way to get around it.
when did reid and pelosi tell their party to sit down and shut up about entitlement reform? never so i guess they are as spineless as boenher is.
the only people that consider the tea party hazardous are those that want to gorge themselves on tax payer dollars.
how many vacations has the president taken in 3 years? more than any other president. they just released the the number of executive branch limo's it has doubled under obama.
yet he is telling the american people to sacrifice? he is the epitome of hypocrasy and elitism. want to know how many vacations i have been on in the past 6 years. 0.
screw him.
and they will get their chance in 2012. that is why we have elections every 2 years for house members.
yea we know we saw the effects of obama, reid, pelosi it will take years to recover from the damage.
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Waste and abuse run through EVERYTHING even private companies, and in many sectors similar private companies have either more abuse or administrative costs to prevent abuse.
For government being an "inefficient mess" it's rather amusing that in all but a few cases they post lower abuse/admin numbers than private industry doing the same things.
Less people spending money also means less economic growth - and less people with money to spend (i.e. entitlements) makes it so there are fewer spenders.
Look at Consumer Confidence numbers sometime and compare them against entitlement levels - they ebb and flow together.
There's a huge difference, they were on that page personally - Boehner has said he intended for his personal goals to include tax adjustments as part of things, he cowtowed to the fringe of his party.
Complete apples and oranges - one changed their view for the fringe of his party, the others shared their view with theirs.
Yea, because things like the Ryan plan regarding Medicare really aren't hazardous to anyone.
He's taken tons of 2-3 day trips yes - W still has him beaten on time quite a bit however. And as for limos are you really commenting that much about another 2 limos that cost less than $1m for the pair?
W was on trips 2 months out of the year for almost every year of his term - where's your rage against him? Obama timewise has been on vacation just over half of that even though he's taken many trips. [And the totals I'm seeing include business related ones]
And two years is far too slow of a timeframe if they're not actually following the will of their constituency closely. Superpowers have fallen in 6 years before when a political process has been hijacked by a fringe element after all.
Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected.
/rolleyes - lets start listing those economy killing bills that need to be recovered from.
Never mind the fact that Republican control has existed to at least a reasonable level across Congress and the Executive branch for the majority of the past 30 years and that economies aren't quick to show the results of X or Y policy. (How many times have you claimed the first 2-4 years of Clinton was Bush Sr's doing, and the early years of W's term was Clinton's fault after all?)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
But hey, who can trust the CBO right? They aren't experts at all.
Oh, and corporations aren't people, they are legal entities. People can go to jail when they commit crimes, corporations can't.
yea and those companies go out of business. government just demands more tax dollars.
of wait not they don't government wastes are tax dollars because those companies are to big to fail.
please the 300 bucks that someone gets a week is only going to be spent when it has to. these acting like these people are supporting the economy in some way is ridiculous.
not to mention they are costing more than they are getting.
if what you say is true then consumer confidence should be at an all time high since well entitlement spending is at an all time high. yet it isn't consumer confidence is in the barrel.
nope no difference. not when some of the democratic party members in neogiations had entitlement reforms in the bill. i know the gang of six plan did.
not all of them no. sorry no difference two fringes of both parties including pelosi and reid.
if you look at the ryan plan the government garenteed the premium coverage. all that was left was the co-pay for meds and visits.
most of his trips were to his home in texas. limo's have gone from 238 to over 400.
yeah like the democrats ignored the will of the people for the 4-6 years they held both houses? they should be kicked out as well then i take it?
if you want an authoritarian government there are plenty of other countries that over that.
N. korean
china,
cuba,
parts of africa
N vietnam.
how many did they pass?
you do realize when pelosi and reid took over that things got worse didn't you?
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Uh, the company's I'm primarily referring to have been in business and continue to be for years in large part due to ridiculously bloated profit margins that keep them afloat with their level of waste.
For the most part the "too big to fails" actually were relatively efficient - not to mention there's not really any government stuff that's equivalent.
It's fact that's been proven time and time again - entitlement money by and far goes right back into the economy as spending within two months of it being issued - those that qualify for these programs by and far spend it, they do not save unless put into dire circumstances.
And Consumer Confidence generally lags behind a little bit, about 6-12 months, and really entitlement spending hasn't changed that much in years - in fact the entire time since W left office there hasn't been one of the largest and most consistent - CoL increases for Social Security.
[Not to mention you've gotta factor in everything and look at post inflation dollars, entitlement while larger as a total than W era, due to inflation and the fact that inflation has outpaced it's growth, it's technically lower than W era right now (even lower than Clinton from my math as well, but not seeing something where the adjustment is already done for me, I could be screwing up the math)...]
Reid, Pelosi and Obama all spoke highly of the Gang of Six version and that they intended to support it if it saw the floor for a vote... (To quote a Reid statement that still sticks in my head from that week: "...the Gang of Six version is how our democracy is supposed to work")
You need to look at it again - you were guaranteed it via a refund, and the refund was set to scale at a portion of the inflation of cost (70% I think?) - so if your plan costs went up $1000 a year for your premium this year (which isn't unheard of - our average plan cost for our BC/BS through my work across our 400+ employees was $700/yr increase here before my retirement, average was just shy of 1k/yr increases during my PA days) you're talking about your premium going up $300/year or so assuming the memory of the 70% is the correct number. (I'm pretty sure it's lower if anything though, 60-70% is the range that sticks in my head)
So not only would the poor have to pony up the cost in the first place in order to get the plan (since it's refund based) but it would become a consistently scaling cost for them that would likely outstrip what they can afford if health care costs continue to rise like they do - with nothing in the plan designed to lower health care costs overall.
That's still a vacation, and duration is more indicative of how much someone vacations anyhow - look at me versus my parents, I've done 20 locations in the past two years as vacations of sorts, all 1-2 day trips and one 8 day to Disney... their trips were only three locations, a 20 day tour of Europe, a 30 day tour of Asia and the same 8 day in Disney (it was their 50th Anniversary was gonna be a Disney Cruise as well, but alas the economy made us reconsider the extra cost)....
Not many people would say that I vacation more than my parents even though I take many day trips.
And those aren't Presidential limos then - that's the Congressional garage. There's a big difference between Air Force One and the Congressional planes - there's a similar difference between the limo fleets. The Presidential garage neighbors the White House itself and couldn't fit more than a handful of vehicles - the Congressional garage on the other hand is enormous and goes down 3 stories underground last time I toured it, but its been ages. [Still less impressive than how small the NSA building looks compared to how deep underground it goes though!]
Will of the People is supposed to be them representing their constituency appropriately with minor rationalizations to buck what their constituency is saying - it doesn't matter if 70% of Americans say Y when the majority of your constituency is saying X instead for how it's SUPPOSED to work.
It's quite possible some of them ignored their constituency, but to be fair, I'm not aware of those cases outside of a few oddballs during weird cases. (The handful that opposed the Patriot Act for example - but PA was a weird case anyhow)
If you've got some examples of Democrats misrepresenting the will of their constituency, I'd be happy to hear it so I can rail against them as well - most Democrats do a good job of being "wishy-washy" like constituency's generally are however - its hard to have the solidarity the Republicans have had the past dozen or so odd years without some portion ignoring their constituency's will.
Pretty sure not a single one of those has what I referenced (in fact, I'm sure of it) - talking about removing the House in preference to polling the interested population on a given matter. We've got the technology to provide the reasoning behind the House without having to be represented in theory.
That's pretty different than having just an executive like you're implying. Radically so in fact.
And as you constantly quote "things take a while to take hold economically from changes" at least when it comes to positive changes you approve of or negative ones you want to pass the buck on....
For example lets look at the New Deal conversation from the past where you say to ignore the first 8 years of recovery because of the later slump that happened and claim that the 8 years of initial recovery was the effect of something else, and only the much delayed slump was because of the New Deal.
I could give dozens more examples of delays that you've said are to be expected when it supports your cause, yet there's no delay for the things you don't.
Having cake and eating it too as they say. Pick a side that you think is appropriate to defend, don't keep flip flopping on legislation effecting the economy quickly/slowly. Logically I'd agree more with the delayed theorem by and far, especially since all economists state that recoveries are slow - but I could be content with you taking either stance far more than this wishy-washy variant where your stance changes with the party involved.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
then be specific most companies can't operate that way and most do not. if they have millions of dollars in waste then they tend to go out of business. that is the model norm for a company in general.
if they were efficient then well they wouldn't have needed bailed out. also i doubt anyone would consider GM or dodge to be efficient and those are just 2 examples.
Prove it all you want to that doesn't mean that it helps considering that the government spend more issueing the checks than it gets back out of it.
when you are living on bare minimum you only spend when you have to. other than that no you aren't spending.
even with the lag factor consumer confidence has been low for years now even with all of the entitlement spending.
really because there are more women on food stamps than ever before so yeah it has changed quite a bit.
then why did they not tell the members of their party that are against entitlement reform to shut up? because they are spinless. thanks.
no you weren't this was a huge lie put out by the liberal media. no where does it issue a refudn of anything.
Meaning that you have a a'la carte of options to pick from. you choose the level of coverages that you want and the government sends the premium check straight to the insurance company. the only thing that the person is responsible for would be co-pays.
the liberal media and democrats took up the call of a voucher system which was totally false. on top of that the people that are currently on medicare would stay on the old system. only people i think it was 55 or younger would go to the new one.
i never said it wasn't but he isn't blowing tax payer money left and right on all of these high cost trips to martha's vineyard, or jet setting his family around the world.
wrong most of them went to clinton which she is under the executive branch.
nice back pedal. if 70% of america which would mean about 70% of the senators and 70% of the house should be kicked out then.
face it the dem's went against the will of the people and their constituency when they were in power. according to your statements they should be kicked out of office.
really? stimulus, tarp 2, obamacare, auto bail outs etc the list goes on and on and on.
for someone that claims to be so indepentant you have a myopic view on a lot of issues.
maybe you need to re-read what you wrote.
the house should be voted out of existance and the senate should be appointed rather than elected.
that is authoritarian/dictatorship. we are at the whims of the people that appoint these people rather than us being in charge of them. AKA we can vote them out if we don't like them.
if you want that type of system you are more than welcome to move to a country that has that type of government in place. there are plenty to choose from, However i do not believe that you will enjoy it there.
sorry i am not john kerry i don't need to flip flop on issues.
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i never said to ignore the first 8 years of recovery. that is a lie. i have said that the new deal policies which more and more economists are signing onto extended the depression by 10 years.
there was nothing in the new deal that ramped up the economy. creating work does not create jobs.
it was the demand for US industrial strength by europe and america entering the war that really got america back on it's feet. nothing from the new deal.
i have stated that keyne's theory of economics has never had a real life attempt where it has worked.
yep there is a delay but not 6 years.
sorry i am not john kerry i don't need to flip flop on issues.[/QUOTE]
Contraction in the money supply combined with wage controls was a major part of the double dip during the Great Depression. The New Deal took cheap credit and put it to work on infrastructure projects that have basically expanded business function, basically the production-possibilitites frontier was expanded and helped to increase employment with a multiplicative effect on future economic growth through the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
Now, by some estimations we weren't out of the Great Depression until the mid 1950's because of the devastated Eurozone and the subsequent recoveries that took time to work and really kicked into gear during the 60's and 70's.
The biggest aspect of the New Deal was the SEC, FDIC, Bretton Woods, and Glass Steagell. That created the economic framework for us for about 2 generations until the mid 90's whenever we started to muck with the regulatory framework. Spending is only half of the equation, as regulating is the other half of the equation when we start talking about government inefficiencies.
A large sector of our economic growth has actually been in the field of finance, not so much in production but rather flipping around pieces of paper in new ways. The interconnectivity of the whole system is basically mind boggling, and is a part of the reason why Keynes was right. The "animal spirits" of the economy such as pessimism work both ways in business, it can be anti-business businesses or anti-government businesses. During the crisis and subsequent aftermath, it was more of an "anti-business business" aroma depending on your industry or more particular the classical anti-banker attitude.
The gist with the Tea Party and spending cuts is that if we cut to the regulatory framework and stamp and weaken the financial sector, we allow for people that are heavy in mathematics to go into fields such as manufacturing, engineering, science, or business where real jobs are started, sustained, and proliferated.
I'd also like to know which economists you're referring to by "more and more," because by my readings over the last few years they seem to be either synthesizing Keynes with other more conservative economists or are full on Keynesian.
The main thing here is to look at Japan and Chile. Chile had a system where it used a surplus of savings to kick start their own economy during a down turn, this has been much applauded. Japan on the other hand during the lost decade went way too far with infrastructure building, had a demographics pop, and entered a liquidity trap that prolonged their Lost Decade.
However, we're far closer to Chile in terms of stable demographics and a more liberal immigration policy. Equally, we do need more water in the Southern areas where there is now drought and a rising population. We have several areas where we could dig or redig canals to increase trade, as well as increase the efficiency of our electrical grid against EMP attacks or solar radiation, increase efficiency, and put people back to work and keep companies open against future oil shocks.
Now for the Great Depression, what helped to prolong that were the currency wars that were prolonged by France, as well as the fascist countries closing off trade to become "self reliant." It wasn't Smoot–Hawley Tariff at all, and in part SHT was in reaction to other tariffs.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Most either do have millions of dollars of waste or millions of dollars of administrative costs.
Almost all of retail is built upon a high profit margin + high waste market for crying out loud. Those Prada shoes your wife wants costs Macy's about $200 to stock but then they sell as many as they can for $800 which isn't many, but enough.
As I stated before, I'm not referring to the bailout companies. (and even most of those didn't have waste/admin cost issues, they had poor sales)
There's companies out there like the health care industry that are 40%ish between their waste/fraud and admin costs - that's ridiculous. (And something Medicare/Medicaid even with their "rampant fraud" manage to handle at closer to 25%!)
Right but you spend all of it - and you know that old "trickle down" economics of Reagan's that some people doubt exists? Consumer spending
works the same way, except it's absolute and easy to follow since it's all self sustaining with no real possibility for someone to halt things.
Bob gets $100 he spends that $100 getting groceries, that grocery store after seeing enough people in Bob's situation added to their customer base needs to hire another cashier and increase purchases a bit which creates two additional levels of thresh the cashier (basically a GOTO 10 since it starts a new tree of economic thresh) and the suppliers that then have to hire more workers and supplies to create more products to supply the grocery....
And it goes on and on and on.
Consumer Confidence index only deals with non-essential retail - food stamps will never touch it - so that one is a moot point.
And as I stated, if you actually factor in CoL changes from inflation entitlement spending has been actually going down. While my grocery bill has gone up nearly 40% a month in the past two years, I've seen zero change in my Social Security personally as one such example.
Why didn't they tell them to vote on a bill that never got brought to the floor for a vote at the discretion of the Republican Speaker of the House? It's a relative waste of time to gerrymander for votes for something that isn't actually being voted upon.
And yes, they did speak out against some of the reform options presented because they were draconian in degree - one of them was suggesting raising retirement age to 75 for example, which might be a reasonable eventual target - but is a heck of a jump from the current 67 to do all at once as it was presented.
Remember agreeing with a general concept isn't the same as agreeing with all forms of said concept.
Sorry, it's a voucher not a refund - it's still set at a portion of the cost of a policy however. And considering Medicare costs $141/mo currently for all but those under the $767/mo income threshold in nine states, and full cost for all the rest, the voucher which would start out at 80% of the policy cost would start out as a boon more than likely. However with the 60% (I've checked it now) growth formula based off inflation it would turn bad in just a few years of inflation.
Especially when you keep in mind that medical costs have been outpacing inflation by over double it's a poor index to base it upon. Although hopefully one that would be sensibly be caught as such and adjusted.
And their portion of the premium payment it wouldn't be 100%.
Kaiser Health which is hardly liberal (they were one of McCain's biggest supporters - and helped rally people up for the anti-HCR bill rallies) was reporting it as an in advance voucher - and yes the new system would be delayed to go into effect for people, that doesn't mean a lousy plan that will effect you but not me is any more sensible for me to support however.
I've yet to see a vacation/trip that wasn't paid for or business related myself outside of the loosely non-business trip he footed to deal with the birth certificate nonsense.
He's been a paid/invited guest for many of the trips - now the one's I'm sure of are a fraction of his total trips, but I've yet to see anything concrete via simple searches that shows him or the Feds paying for his trips to any large length.
First of all technically they wouldn't be "for Obama" then as you stated earlier - and Congressional garage is still where the cabinet and other executive staff get their limos from.
Presidential garage is exclusively for the President, invited guests of state and Secret Service for daily use.
Once again you miss the forest through the damn trees - the problem is House members misrepresenting their constituency (Senators technically aren't supposed to directly represent their people) - if I'm in District 2 and the House member from District 3 votes in contrast to my feelings it doesn't matter.
You're talking about universal opinion with how you're trying to take what I said, if 98% of America is against something but 100% of your district is, you should vote for it with how the House is SUPPOSED to work.
I'm more than welcome to hear of cases of others misrepresenting their districts in the House however. It's not a topic that gets delved into by the news very often though, only ones I know of I had to piece together myself from looking at a districts polls against voting record.
Not sure where the polls fell between districts and their voters outside of locally but for the "will of the people" being against it, our local House members voted appropriately in all of the above cases except.
For example on TARP2: We had 2 districts here that were polling against it, and their two Republican reps voted it down - the other MD districts were all for it, and everyone I've crosschecked had voted for it.
That's appropriate representation.
The House is not supposed to care about national polls, they're supposed to care about how their district polls.
You need to re-reread what I wrote clearly - I was saying voting the House out of existence was MORE preferable than what a certain Republican Presidential hopeful has been saying about overturning the 17th Amendment to make Senators an appointed position again - which is absolute lunacy.
I was condemning the latter idea, not suggesting it. Thus the whole "...makes more sense than..." part.
I like cheeseburgers, but can't stand hamburgers - under your reading of the House/Senate comment I made earlier, you'd take that to mean I love both cheeseburgers and hamburgers. [And it's just a hypothetical to prove your misreading - although I do strongly prefer to have cheese a plain burger is still good]
A true Democracy with technology allowing the citizens to vote on every subject brought for legislation with a Legislative elected body to vote rationally on subjects over public will, an Executive to make quick and final decisions on matters and a Judicial to make sure things don't get too far off track from their original intent?
Pretty sure that place doesn't exist outside of a dreamscape - but I'd be happy to be directed to it.
More and more? I've seen one news contributor in the past 4 years start preaching as much, and he's the child of another anti-Keynes economist, so it's not particularly surprising.
I explained above what giving people that are broke money does economically, read that again if it hasn't sunk in yet.
While likely a factor in things without an alternate reality hopping machine you've got no means to prove that. With or without Keynes things would have been better or worse - what we have to judge upon is expert opinion, which is by and far pro-Keynes/New Deal.
Sometimes expert opinion is proved wrong in the longrun in things that are hard to evaluate in the short term (world being flat was a common expert opinion for a long time, and took centuries to prove - even though something as simple as the earth's curvature can prove it now) - but often things progess as expert's expect.
Only when you attribute all the good to other coincidental factors happening at the same time - which while possibly accurate - are impossible to prove in the current sample size, especially with something with as many moving parts as an economy.
Under normal rationalization something like 9/11 shouldn't have boosted the economy at all, but in the long run it did due to a host of other factors and increased public and private sector job growth.
I can see two flip-flops in just the above post within the post...
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
yet none of them actually helped the economy nor helped the depression. the US continued to suffer even though the massive amount of government spending that went on.
The demand for US industrial base was the reason we got out of the depression plus the fact that there was a huge drain on the US work force as most of the men went to war.
So there were a ton of job openings created as well as a demand for a manufacturing base.
every company has overhead but that doesn't mean that it is waste. if you don't know the difference you should just say so.
overhead is factored into their pricing structure. i had a 10-20% markup just for overhead alone.
so we only pick the companies that you choose? don't think so.
I am not going to hire more cashiers unless i need to, and no technically i can almost get rid of those since places are switch to automated check outs.
as long as my current staff can handle the load i don't need to hire people. bob spending 100 bucks isn't really helping me out. since that money will have to go back to the government at some point in time usually with interest involved.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. the person involved never saw a dime of money. it went straight from the government to the insurance company. there was not a credit or voucher paid to the person.
according to all sources i have seen the government would cover a premium up to 8000 dollars. the higher the income level then the lower it scales down. it would then scale to inflation after that.
depends on the premium payment. the average premium paymentw ould be about 8K. so if you picked a plan less than that then you wouldn't have a payment at all.
i said executive branch.
yep and when 70% of america is against something do you not realize that well it would be close to 70% of the people in the house?
before 2010 election both my rep and my senator is represented our district which is pretty conservative. so does that mean they should lose thier jobs? ol wait one did in 2010 and the other will in 2012.
That universal opinion consists of people in your district. We are not a true democracy we are a republic. we elect people to office that are suppose to have our interests. if they don't then we vote them out the next election.
which is what happened in 2010. Democrats got slaughtered because they failed to represent their people and their districts. if the republicans do the same then in 2012 they will lose as well. that is why house members only get 2 years. so that they are suppose to stay close to the people they are representing.
nope i posted exactly what you wrote word for word.
that is not what you said i posted exactly what you said. if you meant something else then you should be clearer in what you are trying to say i cannot read your mind.
certain republican presidential hopefuls means as much as that straw poll in iowa.
yeah your not looking that is just two out of several.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23view.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/new-deal-prolonged-the-great-depression/story-e6frg6zo-1111118757600
they can be that all they want the real world says differently. the new deal showed tons of money being spent and overall unemployement remain the same. overall wages were stagnant due to salary freezes placed by the government as part of the new deal.
today we have billions and trillions of dollars being spent and unemployement has shown little movement except up.
It didn't job growth was curbed for about 3 years. it wasn't until mid 2003-2004 that job growth and economic growth started happening again
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The waste that I'm referring to in many industries is complete waste - spoiled product and theft as examples - and regardless overhead is still a form of waste, since it's just inflating pricing to cover loss which is often from waste of some form.
When I'm referring to normal business on all sorts of levels not just a handful of too big to fail, it sure is - especially when one of the few industries that doesn't have substantial waste is financials outside of odd blips is on that list.
You do realize on average a trained cashier handles 5 times the volume of an automated teller and the automated cashiers run nearly $150k to set up the first POS and $50k for each additional, not even covering recurring costs for repair/etc. right?
And due to the problems involved in each the industry standard is one extra low level management on call per 4-5 automated cashiers - not to mention most groceries also still like to offer baggers and other assistance for the shoppers - and the more people that check out the more staffing that is required for cart return/etc/etc/etc.
When you're talking about another 100 Bob's a day you sure do.
And specifically for "entitlement based cash" since it largely comes in the first two weeks of the month for most types it's VERY notable in most low-end retail, did you know that Wal-Mart for example has nearly 50% more staffing for the 3rd through the 12th of each month for example?
Grocery is even more exacerbated by it, although my secondary departments didn't get impacted (i.e. coffee/specialty tea and cheese) all the primary departments required twice the staffing for the first weeks of the month. (I wasn't as precise to micromanage it down like Wal-Mart though, I did 1st-14th as doubled staffing compared to the rest of the month unless a family holiday month was on the way)
It's strange that a group that was lobbying against the HCR bill and pro-McCain would make that error.
Sounds about right - but not at 1:1 with inflation and health care costs have been rising at nearly 2:1 compared to inflation anyhow - setting it up for the insurance companies or the people to take a huge bite in the rear after a decade or so.
The only limos under his control as your statement implied is the Presidential Garage, and while the secondary attaches do get provided limos - theirs aren't their "property" or what-have-you. The ones they use are legislative limos technically speaking, the two branches are intertwined on some secondary items like limos. [Shouldn't be surprising even without a good civics background considering everyone knows what the VP's primary purpose is after all - he also gets his personal limos from the Congressional Garage BTW, since I only referenced the Cabinet earlier]
I'd imagine he can't even write requisitions to increase the size of the Congressional limo pool after seeing the fit that the Democrats through a couple years back over W trying to lend out some of the Presidential planes out to Congress to use.
There's a huge difference from general polls and actual polling - look at Obama's election as an example - electoral college wise (i.e. local district polling) he demolished McCain pretty handedly, but overall the actual percentage was pretty dicey with how close it was.
It's quite possible to have something like a 70% portion against something overall and yet have regions with 60-70% support FOR the item and other regions with support in the range of single digits.
There's a reason we have the electoral college and each state gets equal Senators and districts aren't necessarily the same population after all.
Republicans are supposed to feel strongly about avoiding the tyranny of the majority mentioned in the founding of our nation - why would you even think for a second that is a good idea?
The problem is that when the 2 year term was created that was only six months of actual legislation that they had to muck with things and during their 9 months a year at home it was basically impossible to ignore hobnobbing with the neighbors and getting opinions on current legislation.
Whereas politicians today at times have a bill a week with nearly 40 weeks in session - and almost ignoring their constituency during their down time.
Things are apples and oranges since then. No one could sanely say that the Founding Father's ever envisioned the current level of rapidity and lack of time with their constituents that occurs today.
You sure as heck did not my quote C/P'ed so literally word for word besides the bolding I've added to show an important bit: "Frankly with modern technology the House should be voted out of existence IMO - would certainly make more sense than certain people suggesting overturning the 17th Amendment and making the Senate appointed rather than elected."
Your mangled quote of me: "the house should be voted out of existance and the senate should be appointed rather than elected."
PS - That person I was referring to supporting axing the 17th Amendment? Mr. Rick Perry.
You said new people were supporting it - Tyler Cowen has been doing economics talk for as long as I can remember, and the two on the Australian paper have been doing it nearly as long as Ben Stein.
These aren't old dogs turning around, they're old dogs that are just barking more loudly about things again and barked about them before.
"More and more" as I was repeating from your statement implies there is new blood coming into their fold, and I have not seen it, nor have what you provided evidence it since these are all Reagan-era or before for when they became active in economic theory.
If you have a net gain of $0 at the end of your year personally, does that mean nothing in your portfolio of assets was successful at all? There's a reason why microeconomies like businesses actually track all their gains and losses to maximize and minimize what works and does not work effectively. Unfortunately when you're talking about macroeconomics the scale makes it impossible to weigh out any single factor without completely freezing the economy to run a proper test, which would be messy and thus will never happen without an alternate reality machine.
Or for another analogy - my wife's been complaining to me about gaining 3 pounds in the past month while doing a more strict exercise regimen and having a much healthier diet due to her ulcer's diet restrictions - since her weight is going the wrong way, would you say that the exercise and diet improvements are doing nothing for her? Or is the reality more likely that the medications that she's been taking for her ulcer that can cause an increase in water weight generating additional weight at a higher rate than her exercise and diet - and that once that extra mitigating factor is gone results will be as expected? An economy is similar with a push and pull of factors going the right and wrong way except instead of just 5-10 factors to deal with you've got hundreds - from consumer confidence, to the effects of tariffs and local taxes, etc.
Or TL;DR for those paragraphs: Just because something didn't reverse a problem doesn't mean it wouldn't have been worse without it.
And when it started pulling up strongly was when the DHS and affiliates started receiving boku bucks as a result of the Patriot Act that came from 9/11 - in the longrun it was an economic stimulus - in exchange for some short term economic numbing.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
I am just curious, to you what is the definition of "helped the economy"? Cause if you mean all the suffering ended and we started to see rampant growth with low unemployment then yeah, it didn't "help" but if you mean, like everyone else in the world does, that it means "reduced suffering and caused growth that otherwise wouldn't have occurred during a liquidity trap" then yes, the efforts of the New Deal helped.
This chart, http://www.housingbubblebust.com/GDP/Depression.html easily shows that while FDR was President, there was recovery except for the when they switched to austerity measures which causes another crunch.
Who's the Majority Leader? Eric Cantor. Cantor wants Boehner's job. Cantor has allied himself with the Tea Party. He wasn't elected by the Tea Party but he's hitched his wagon to their ideals since being threatened by them last election. He's ambitious, smart, and willing to do what it takes to advance his own position.
Cantor has inserted himself into a very powerful position among the House Republicans and he holds a lot of sway over both the Tea Partiers and the rest. He controls which way the votes go because the Republican leadership is top-down. Boehner knows that and knows he must work with Cantor, no matter how extreme Cantor goes.
Here's the rub. The Tea Partiers are new to Congress. They energized a motivated base during an off-year election cycle. They didn't beat the odds so much as stacked the odds for themselves. Note I'm not saying they cheated; I'm saying the environment in which they were elected was very conducive to them.
I love the core message of the Tea Party: the federal government is too large. What I don't agree with are their willingness to cut off the country at its knees and their position that compromise is a bad thing. Sticking to your principles is fine in theory, but you can't take an absolute position every time or nothing will get done. "My way or the highway" has never worked in Washington and insisting that everyone play by those rules is dangerous. They have shown they are willing to choose the greater of two evils because their option isn't on the table.
I apologize to you if you feel my rhetoric is harsh. I just have little respect for fanaticism and blind allegiance to idealism. Politicians should be elected for their nuance and willingness to listen. The Tea Party representatives have so far shown neither of those qualities and instead have made themselves out to me as a bunch of spoiled children who threaten to take the ball and go home if we don't play by their rules.
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The first rule of Cursecatcher is, You do not talk about Cursecatcher.
1) It can tax its citizens. Our government is not taxing as high as it could, but high taxes reduce standard of living because more money goes to government rather than citizens. Taxing one segment of the population (the segment that controls prices) simply results in those taxes going back into the prices which causes prices to rise and more government aid to be required. The wealthy take thier profit and then the rest gets taxed back into the slush pool to pay for the ever increasing costs of necesseties. The poor never get ahead in this cycle.
2) It can borrow from other foreign soverigns. Borrowing works for a time, but this money MUST be paid back in times of plenty. I'm all for the Bush tax cuts in principle, but with rampant debt and deficits, plus new spending bills the tax cuts were a mistake. Tax reform is needed, not just cuts. If it borrows from foreign governments it can also be subject to thier demands. This is a long running tactic to bring a powerful government into servatude. (See British in India and the Opium Wars)
3) It can print the money it needs. This goes back into the economy resulting in price increases as everyone can and must pay more for goods. This scenario is worse than #1 because there is no wicking effect of Taxes, so the wealth gap gets enormous, and those in the middle become very polarized either by becomming wealthy (producer) or by becomming poor (wage earner).
Our government has been doing a combination of the 3 for the last 100 years.
The poor only get out of poverty by producing something of value, whether a good or service in which the value doesn't change. IE the price goes up along with any increases in cost. Our education system is designed to produce two things. 1) employees - who don't know how to effectively market thier services so they undersell them to corporations who profit at thier expense. 2) Soldiers. Which contributes to our bloated military budget.
You do realize that interchanging a few words and dropping #3 off the list (well normally, TARP was an exception to the rule of course) that you could interchange it to say business doesn't work under the same logic, right?
And even then for manufacturing things "printing money" by overproducing product to create a glut on retailers that are overbuying is a frequent thing recently - so many products drop off nearly 50% 3-6 months after release these days outside of specialty retail, it's ridiculous.
Not to mention some of the statements imply there's some sort of altruism to hiring and that these people with the hiring controls would be hiring if they just had a little more money - yet with over $1T sitting unused in the coffers of the corporate world right now that is being unused, I find that a weak argument.
$1T is enough to make plenty of hires to drop unemployment at least a handful of %'s if they so deemed at least a single percent if they just wanted to demonstrate a 1% improvement or what-have-you.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.