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The Scale of the US Budget...
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Because when I need political and economic analysis, I ask a self-promoting motivational huckster.
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Look at that! Athens is coming over to the Right side of things! I knew it! Doesn't it feel good to be Right more often, Athens?
More seriously though, I'm glad even those who are pro big government are starting to recognize the enormity of the US fiscal problem. It hasn't hit home yet for a number of reasons, but if we don't get things in shape quickly there will be a day of judgment for the US and the entire world, and it will have been the most preventable, most foreseen world economic crisis ever. The Left will be to blame, but as usual the intellectually and morally bankrupt leftists will claim it was evil capitalists who were the real villains responsible for the carnage.
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Last edited by Big Mac; Apr 18, 2012 at 12:32 PM.
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The sad thing is, this is no surprise to anyone, and least of all leftists.
Statists' obsession with soaking the rich has NOTHING what-so-ever to do with fiscal responsibility. It doesn't matter that the numbers don't add up, never did, never will. It doesn't matter that the leviathan they cheerlead for is completely unsustainable and it doesn't matter that it will all eventually collapse and lead to worse poverty and misery than anything the statist has ever pretended to wring his hands over.
All that matters is punishing people that dare to be successful, because the statist has an inbred desire to hate those that can actually do and achieve things and be rewarded for what they do by becoming wealthier than the statist will ever be. All that matters is getting even. If it takes a massive, out of control tyrannical beast of a government that eats through every penny that'll ever be earned by anyone to get even, then so be it.
That's the sad reality of it. So a mere look at facts won't sway those steeped in the 'getting even' mentality. They'll do things like *ahem* attack the messenger rather than even acknowledge the facts.
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Agree with much of the above, CH, except I think a lot of lefties are genuinely ignorant of fiscal realities. There are many who claim that the US will never run out of money and can deficit spend into perpetuity, that it's not real debt because of some special factor of the US economic system. They think we're just trying to scare everyone into curtailing their redistributionist schemes.
I also know that most people, left center or right, don't know that one year of Social Security and Medicare spending is equivalent to ten years of Afgan and Iraq war spending combined. A substantial portion of the public believes our ginormous deficits and debt have largely been driven by the wars, not Entitlements and the explosive growth of the federal bureaucracy.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
There are many who claim that the US will never run out of money and can deficit spend into perpetuity, that it's not real debt because of some special factor of the US economic system. They think we're just trying to scare everyone into curtailing their redistributionist schemes.
While personally I think government spends too much and has gotten too big I still have to wonder why people (aka China) keep lending us money. The fact that governments still lend us such crazy sums of money does lend some credibility to the argument that we can keep borrowing and haven't hit our limit yet.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
Look at that! Athens is coming over to the Right side of things! I knew it! Doesn't it feel good to be Right more often, Athens?
I knew this was going to bite me
I am not coming over to the right side... But the US is def heading for disaster. Its not balanced enough. You can't have low taxes and all the social programs in the world with out a major problem.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
Agree with much of the above, CH, except I think a lot of lefties are genuinely ignorant of fiscal realities. There are many who claim that the US will never run out of money and can deficit spend into perpetuity, that it's not real debt because of some special factor of the US economic system. They think we're just trying to scare everyone into curtailing their redistributionist schemes.
I also know that most people, left center or right, don't know that one year of Social Security and Medicare spending is equivalent to ten years of Afgan and Iraq war spending combined. A substantial portion of the public believes our ginormous deficits and debt have largely been driven by the wars, not Entitlements and the explosive growth of the federal bureaucracy.
Money is debt and debt is money. They go together. The US and most countries can never become debt free because all new money is created with interest. There isn't enough money to ever pay for the new money with out borrowing more new money which continues the cycle because the new money borrowed has attached debt right off the bat.
The central banks that control our economies have it good with this setup.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
The Left will be to blame, but as usual the intellectually and morally bankrupt leftists will claim it was evil capitalists who were the real villains responsible for the carnage.
I can't help but notice this statement goes completely unqualified. Its like it was written by a creationist.
So, the left is to blame for the financial crisis. I can only assume that you think this is the case for one of the following reasons:
1 - The left failed to clean up the mess left by the right (this time).
2 - The morally bankrupt left spent all the money trying to make sure that people didn't die because they couldn't afford health insurance or food.
Which is it?
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3 - They didn't stop all stupid shit Bush was doing and decided to pile on a massive amount of their own.
I'd love to get my hands on that budget for 6 months. There'd be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but by God it would be balanced.
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Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
1 - The left failed to clean up the mess left by the right (this time).
You're assuming much and thinking too narrowly, but I can't really blame you for being ignorant of domestic American politics and history. I'm not talking just about Obama. He's merely the natural culmination of an uninterrupted presidential policy over the last 70 years engendering enormous government-a policy that Democrats have championed but which a majority of Republican politicians have also gone along with (aside from Libertarian and Tea Party type Republicans). The Right hasn't truly been in power in this country since President Coolidge. President Reagan had a lot of good tax policies and small government ideology, but he also allowed spending to explode-in fairness he had to cooperate with a Democratic Congress and had as his main concern ending the Cold War by outdoing the Soviets economically. Reagan said in his farewell address that the spending explosion under his watch was one of his greatest regrets. Every other Republican president from Eisenhower to Bush has been a moderate, big government Republican in fiscal orientation.
2 - The morally bankrupt left spent all the money trying to make sure that people didn't die because they couldn't afford health insurance or food.
If Social Security and Medicare only narrowly targeted poor senior citizens (as Social Security was originally implemented under FDR, in fairness to him, then lamentably extended to all seniors by successive presidents Republican and Democratic), I wouldn't have nearly as strong an objection to it. I'd still find those Entitlements unconstitutional and unnecessary in the face of private and state aid, but I wouldn't be nearly as passionate about it if costs were contained. But the Democrats have resisted time and time again all attempts to means test these programs. The Dems despise rich people until they retire, at which point the party becomes rabid in favor of giving all seniors-including the richest among them-the most generous benefits. I bet you weren't aware that the current senior citizen population possesses the highest amount of wealth as compared to all other age groups. Warren Buffet (among others at his financial level) receives Social Security and Medicare welfare entitlements despite his enormous wealth. Does that disturb you in the least? Meanwhile the US rockets toward national bankruptcy and worldwide economic destruction. I'm thankful that you can't vote in our elections, War. I'm sure you're a nice chap, but I'm thankful for that.
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Last edited by Big Mac; Apr 19, 2012 at 05:04 AM.
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Originally Posted by Athens
Money is debt and debt is money. They go together. The US and most countries can never become debt free because all new money is created with interest. There isn't enough money to ever pay for the new money with out borrowing more new money which continues the cycle because the new money borrowed has attached debt right off the bat.
I've seen you write this before. I almost called that paragraph sophistic, but those words don't even sound that deceptively convincing. Money is not debt. If you look up the dictionary definition of money, you will find nowhere on that page any reference to debt. If you look up the term currency you won't see debt there either. And even if you look up the phrase Federal Reserve Note in a popular online encyclopedia, the only time you see the word debt (other than the "legal tender for all debts public and private" line) is in relation to Treasuries and the Feds' dastardly practice of "monetizing the debt." US Treasuries only came into existence in WWI, whereas the US dollar has been in existence since the founding of the country; to claim that the US dollar exists only by virtue of government debt is a falsehood. I think it's an act of self-deception on your part to believe what you wrote above, Athens.
To argue the point from a different angle, money is broadly defined as anything accepted as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Throughout human history there have been many different types of money. In some early sea cultures, seashells were money. But one of the oldest, most permanent forms of money has been precious metals - most notably gold and silver. Most importantly Precious Metals are desirable as money because they are rare and can't be artificially created. Precious Metals also exist without any counter-party risk; in other words, there's no external entity (i.e. government) that could ever default on precious metals and therefore debase their value. Gold and silver and other PMs go up and down in price based on free market supply and demand, but their values are determined by their market prices only.
You can claim that US dollars are linked to US debt, and that's true to an extent but only as an associated and not essential condition of the US dollar's existence (as I said above), and to the extent that's true it's because of US government debasement of the dollar through making it a fiat currency and the monetizing of debt. But precious metals cannot be fabricated by government or debased through government debt. That is why people like Ron Paul call it real money.
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Last edited by Big Mac; Apr 19, 2012 at 05:37 AM.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
Look at that! Athens is coming over to the Right side of things! I knew it! Doesn't it feel good to be Right more often, Athens?
More seriously though, I'm glad even those who are pro big government are starting to recognize the enormity of the US fiscal problem. It hasn't hit home yet for a number of reasons, but if we don't get things in shape quickly there will be a day of judgment for the US and the entire world, and it will have been the most preventable, most foreseen world economic crisis ever. The Left will be to blame, but as usual the intellectually and morally bankrupt leftists will claim it was evil capitalists who were the real villains responsible for the carnage.
Why do you insist on repeating the same old fictional hush money over and over and over again? Do you think your repetition will make it become true?
The left (at least the majority of them) is well aware of the debt problem and has been for as long as anybody else. It doesn't take anybody with more than a 9th grade education to look at the size of the debt and conclude that it might not be a good thing.
The difference between the left and right is simply their solutions.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
I've seen you write this before. I almost called that paragraph sophistic, but those words don't even sound that deceptively convincing. Money is not debt. If you look up the dictionary definition of money, you will find nowhere on that page any reference to debt. If you look up the term currency you won't see debt there either. And even if you look up the phrase Federal Reserve Note in a popular online encyclopedia, the only time you see the word debt (other than the "legal tender for all debts public and private" line) is in relation to Treasuries and the Feds' dastardly practice of "monetizing the debt." US Treasuries only came into existence in WWI, whereas the US dollar has been in existence since the founding of the country; to claim that the US dollar exists only by virtue of government debt is a falsehood. I think it's an act of self-deception on your part to believe what you wrote above, Athens.
To argue the point from a different angle, money is broadly defined as anything accepted as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Throughout human history there have been many different types of money. In some early sea cultures, seashells were money. But one of the oldest, most permanent forms of money has been precious metals - most notably gold and silver. Most importantly Precious Metals are desirable as money because they are rare and can't be artificially created. Precious Metals also exist without any counter-party risk; in other words, there's no external entity (i.e. government) that could ever default on precious metals and therefore debase their value. Gold and silver and other PMs go up and down in price based on free market supply and demand, but their values are determined by their market prices only.
You can claim that US dollars are linked to US debt, and that's true to an extent but only as an associated and not essential condition of the US dollar's existence (as I said above), and to the extent that's true it's because of US government debasement of the dollar through making it a fiat currency and the monetizing of debt. But precious metals cannot be fabricated by government or debased through government debt. That is why people like Ron Paul call it real money.
When I read Athens' post, I was trying to determine where to start when all of a sudden...
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Originally Posted by besson3c
The left (at least the majority of them) is well aware of the debt problem and has been for as long as anybody else. It doesn't take anybody with more than a 9th grade education to look at the size of the debt and conclude that it might not be a good thing.
The difference between the left and right is simply their solutions.
This is fair. So... what are these solutions from the left of which you speak?
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Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
I can't help but notice this statement goes completely unqualified. Its like it was written by a creationist.
I'm pretty sure it was, actually.
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Originally Posted by Athens
Money is debt and debt is money. They go together. The US and most countries can never become debt free because all new money is created with interest.
Originally Posted by Big Mac
I've seen you write this before. I almost called that paragraph sophistic, but those words don't even sound that deceptively convincing. Money is not debt.
I think the premise "money is debt" needs to be qualified some more, but Big Mac is going off on a complete tangent about it.
The correct formulation is credit = debt. For every debt issued, there is someone who has a future claim on it (creditor). For those people / organization, someone else's debt is actually an asset.
The problem with all the debt is that it can't be repaid; therefore, many people and organizations that think they have an asset have in reality jack squat.
Debt does NOT have to be repaid, but SOMEONE will take a hit if it's not repaid.
The issue of relating money to credit/debt is that fractional reserve banking allows "creating" more money through creation of credit. Because the reserve requirements at banks have been systematically lowered over the last 80 years, credit (and with that debt) have exploded.
At that point, it really doesn't matter how much "printed" money is in existance, it's all bits and bytes anyways.
The improtant disctinction (where Athens and Big Mac have differing views) is WHAT is money ?
Athens uses money as a synonym for currency, like the US Dollar. Big Mac uses Money in a more general sense as something that has value.
In a larger sense, Athens is actually right to say Money = Debt, because Money = Credit, and Credit = Debt.
The reason while this holds true in the US (and any fiat currency in existance) is that this "money" is backed by NOTHING. It's only a promise that someone else will accept it in the future for whatever value is printed on it. Because prices in the real world can change, the printed value on "money" notes is completely arbitrary. Today's currencies (or money, if you wish) is a complete ponzi scheme.
I urge anyone here to read the following book, which talks directly about he credit and debt bubble, and how the destruction of it will lead to a huge negative impacts.
When the United States stopped backing dollars with gold in 1968, the nature of money changed. All previous constraints on money and credit creation were removed and a new economic paradigm took shape. Economic growth ceased to be driven by capital accumulation and investment as it had been since before the Industrial Revolution. Instead, credit creation and consumption began to drive the economic dynamic. In The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, Richard Duncan introduces an analytical framework, The Quantity Theory of Credit, that explains all aspects of the calamity now unfolding: its causes, the rationale for the government's policy response to the crisis, what is likely to happen next, and how those developments will affect asset prices and investment portfolios.
Amazon.com: The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy (9781118157794): Richard Duncan: Books
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
I've seen you write this before. I almost called that paragraph sophistic, but those words don't even sound that deceptively convincing. Money is not debt. If you look up the dictionary definition of money, you will find nowhere on that page any reference to debt. If you look up the term currency you won't see debt there either. And even if you look up the phrase Federal Reserve Note in a popular online encyclopedia, the only time you see the word debt (other than the "legal tender for all debts public and private" line) is in relation to Treasuries and the Feds' dastardly practice of "monetizing the debt." US Treasuries only came into existence in WWI, whereas the US dollar has been in existence since the founding of the country; to claim that the US dollar exists only by virtue of government debt is a falsehood. I think it's an act of self-deception on your part to believe what you wrote above, Athens.
To argue the point from a different angle, money is broadly defined as anything accepted as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Throughout human history there have been many different types of money. In some early sea cultures, seashells were money. But one of the oldest, most permanent forms of money has been precious metals - most notably gold and silver. Most importantly Precious Metals are desirable as money because they are rare and can't be artificially created. Precious Metals also exist without any counter-party risk; in other words, there's no external entity (i.e. government) that could ever default on precious metals and therefore debase their value. Gold and silver and other PMs go up and down in price based on free market supply and demand, but their values are determined by their market prices only.
You can claim that US dollars are linked to US debt, and that's true to an extent but only as an associated and not essential condition of the US dollar's existence (as I said above), and to the extent that's true it's because of US government debasement of the dollar through making it a fiat currency and the monetizing of debt. But precious metals cannot be fabricated by government or debased through government debt. That is why people like Ron Paul call it real money.
In a fractional reserve banking system which sadly both our countries use a long side a central bank model, money is debt because the money we have today is created out of thin air, out of debt, or promise to pay. For every dollar created under our fractional reserve banking system is a dollar+ interest of debt to be paid back. Under our current models money is debt. And it can never be paid back. If every person, every business and the government tried to pay off 100% of all debt, it couldn't be done under our current financial system, its impossible.
EDIT
** Just read Turtles reply, what he said
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Originally Posted by ebuddy
This is fair. So... what are these solutions from the left of which you speak?
I'd say that a part of this would be cutbacks while taking *value* into account, rather than cutbacks while taking a purely personal sense of morality and/or ideology into account. Additionally, repealing the Bush tax cuts, reforming health care (although many don't see Obamacare as a perfect manifestation of their vision), and some would probably add military spending cuts, looking at creating green jobs, corporate finance reform to kill too big to fail, etc.
Don't counter on the wisdom behind each of these points, I'm just giving you what I see as an overview from the monolithic left. I think some of these might be good ideas, but not necessarily all of them.
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Originally Posted by Athens
In a fractional reserve banking system which sadly both our countries use a long side a central bank model, money is debt because the money we have today is created out of thin air, out of debt, or promise to pay.
I knew you were talking about fractional reserve banking, but you said in unqualified form, "money is debt and debt is money." That's a falsehood. Fiat currency may easily be debased by debt because it is created from nothing and backed by nothing other than faith in government, but money is not inherently tied to debt at all.
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Originally Posted by SSharon
While personally I think government spends too much and has gotten too big I still have to wonder why people (aka China) keep lending us money. The fact that governments still lend us such crazy sums of money does lend some credibility to the argument that we can keep borrowing and haven't hit our limit yet.
Ever speak to people who have filed bankruptcy because of credit card debt (especially pre-2008)? Many of them will tell you they were given new credit lines or large extensions of credit when they obviously were deeply in the hole with declining credit worthiness, but they were paying on time so they still had decent scores until the stiuation became untenable and they had to default.
The US still has a decent but declining credit score, so it's not surprising that we're still being lent to by foreign lenders like the Chinese. The Chinese also have a vested financial interest in not seeing the dollar collapse because they own so many dollars. They've signaled they want to diversify and have been concerned with the US fiscal outlook for some time, but they can't just dump all their dollars - dumping them would tank the dollar's value and make much of their dollar assets worth even less. So they hold on and continue financing a portion of Washington's recklessness. It should also be pointed out though that while foreign debt owners (the likes of China, Japan and the Arabia) hold a lot of US debt, the main financier of the federal government deficits is the Fed through its monetization of the debt.
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
I knew you were talking about fractional reserve banking, but you said in unqualified form, "money is debt and debt is money." That's a falsehood. Fiat currency may easily be debased by debt because it is created from nothing and backed by nothing other than faith in government, but money is not inherently tied to debt at all.
What backs money if not for Credit which is debt. Its not gold. That ended in the 60's and 70's.
US Economy Chart
US GDP with Debt Ceiling as well
Notice the pattern of Debt along with the size and scale of the economy.
Most of the money out there today, what is in your pocket is tied to debt. If its not your credit, its the credit used by the company or person that paid you that generated that dollar. If its not the credit or debt from the company that paid you at some point down the line its the debt/credit the Government created to create that money from the central bank. Because all new money is produced with interest. So all money has debt attached to it from Interest. If not from the central bank when the federal government creates money then at the banking level when the bank uses a fractional reserve to create credit out of thin air to companies and people.
The same pattern is exactly the same in Canada except because Canada is a net exporter still the debt does not have to equal our GDP. Combine our export income and our debt it matches Canada's GDP graph as well. But its the same pattern.
Fractional reserve banking systems only function with debt/credit. The economic growth we have seen in both countries over the last 35 years has been on credit. Credit to people, credit to corporations and credit to government.
Ok easier number to work with. US Debt including federal, state, personal and business is over 50 Trillion dollars.
Financial position of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Its impossible to pay off that 50 Trillion dollars.
Rest of what I had said removed, I just cant explain it well enough...
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Originally Posted by lpkmckenna
Eventually, you get tired of the chicken little act from the libertarian nut-bars, but that's the only act they know.
Kind of like "THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!!!!!!!" chicken little act from the MMGW nutbars. Definitely the only act they know.
Which is more ridiculous? People that think a global depression may happen again, or people that insist everyone else except themselves using light bulbs and driving automobiles is going to destroy the planet?
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
Agree with much of the above, CH, except I think a lot of lefties are genuinely ignorant of fiscal realities. There are many who claim that the US will never run out of money and can deficit spend into perpetuity, that it's not real debt because of some special factor of the US economic system. They think we're just trying to scare everyone into curtailing their redistributionist schemes.
I also know that most people, left center or right, don't know that one year of Social Security and Medicare spending is equivalent to ten years of Afgan and Iraq war spending combined. A substantial portion of the public believes our ginormous deficits and debt have largely been driven by the wars, not Entitlements and the explosive growth of the federal bureaucracy.
I don't disagree with you. I still think there are plenty of lefties that actually know this is unsustainable, but they don't care- their main focus in life is getting even with someone else who has more than them.
It's a PRIMAL human motivation unfortunately. It's the reason you can go all over the world and find dictators living in mansions with a fleet of gold plated cars stealing every dime of national resources while the population lives in falling down shacks with no running water. Yet there's a picture of the dictator up on every wall and people fall over themselves to worship the guy. And when asked who is their biggest enemy, some rich corporation or the dictator, people will chant and yell and blame the corporation for their ills, not the guy lording it over them with an iron fist. Why? Because he got rid of all those terrible rich people that used to shame them and make them jealous!
That primal motivation trumps all forms of common sense.
So basically, even when you show some people videos like this, and it's explained that even going to the absolute extreme of their pipe dream -a 100% fleecing of all the rich people and corporations they're jealous of- and that even going that far will produce jack squat compared to the spending behemoth they've cheerlead to do it, they STILL don't care. There are people so far gone they don't even see anything wrong with DOING all the fleecing mentioned in the video. "Great! Let's do it! No more rich people to shame me and make me feel jealous!"
So what if there's no one left to run a business that employs anyone for any sort of livable wage? So what if there's no one left to provide decent services? So what if the only choices are shoddy bullshit from a totalitarian state? The more important thing is... no rich people to be jealous of!
You can find this model IN ACTION all over the world, RIGHT NOW. For most of human history it was the world norm. The reason it works, is because the architects of it understand the primal motivations and exploit them to the fullest extent. Sadly, many people don't actually want to be free, if it means their neighbor is free to become wealthier than they are. And if you have a totalitarian regime promising to 'take care of you' even if its with crumbs and falling down shacks, that's better to many so long as that potential wealthier neighbor is mired in shit too.
Liberal US politicians would LOVE nothing more than to construct the same setups, or as close to it as they can get, if not for that pesky 'outdated' constitution thing limiting their powers, dammit. But not to worry, somehow, some way they'll get around it.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
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Originally Posted by lpkmckenna
Uhm, yeah, right. By all historic measures, we ARE already in the new depression.
Just look at unemployment: if calculated the same way it was back in the 1930s, we are much higher today. If you look at destruction of purchasing power, same thing.
Don't let the paper money fool you.
Unfortunately, I think it's too late for you and many others. You seem to be happy to believe what politicians tell you. Fools.
-t
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: midwest
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Originally Posted by besson3c
I'd say that a part of this would be cutbacks while taking *value* into account, rather than cutbacks while taking a purely personal sense of morality and/or ideology into account. Additionally, repealing the Bush tax cuts, reforming health care (although many don't see Obamacare as a perfect manifestation of their vision), and some would probably add military spending cuts, looking at creating green jobs, corporate finance reform to kill too big to fail, etc.
Don't counter on the wisdom behind each of these points, I'm just giving you what I see as an overview from the monolithic left. I think some of these might be good ideas, but not necessarily all of them.
Whew. If not for this last statement, I'd have taken the time to lambaste the above points as ridiculous, but since you've given some indication of how invested you are in them I will thankfully pass.
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ebuddy
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
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Originally Posted by ebuddy
Whew. If not for this last statement, I'd have taken the time to lambaste the above points as ridiculous, but since you've given some indication of how invested you are in them I will thankfully pass.
I hope that you'd be just as eager to lambaste the ridiculousness of the ideology on the far right too. Some of their ideology is as out there as some of the above points.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
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Originally Posted by turtle777
-t
Notice how the sh*tstorm started in 2001.
Bush tax cuts ==> record deficits
Bush tax cuts ==> stagnate annual per capita income
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Bush Tax Cuts == Job Killer
June 2001: 132,047,000 employed
June 2003: 129,839,000 employed
2.21 million jobs were LOST after 2 years of Bush Tax Cuts.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: May 2001
Status:
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10 years of failed Bush Tax Cuts.
Republicans say lets continue the failed Bush Tax Cuts.
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Bush Tax Cuts == Job Killer
June 2001: 132,047,000 employed
June 2003: 129,839,000 employed
2.21 million jobs were LOST after 2 years of Bush Tax Cuts.
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