Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 12:31:47 GMT -5
ps., sure, if both the Democrats and Republicans got together and said, "here, look, we're going to cut THIS stuff across the board, and we're going to raise THESE taxes across the board, and here's why," then sure, voters really have nowhere to run, BOTH parties are calling for the same things, everybody's job is safe. Maybe that would work. It would be fun to see that for a change. But it would also be interesting to see if that would cause any riots, or threats of secession, or an overnight political movement to spring up to elect just enough people to ensure that things stay just the way they are after all, in all its madness. THAT never happens, does it?
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 12:58:37 GMT -5
"As for polls -- In the same poll they will ask, "should we cut spending," and the majority answer is yes. Then in the SAME poll they ask questions like, "should we cut the mortgage interest deduction," "should we cut federal education grants," "should we cut medicare," "should we cut social security," "should we cut the earned income tax credit," and majorities in every case is NOT to cut any of those things."
HELL no. Quit cutting the middle class and poor people off at the knees and cut the military budget. Cut Homeland Security. Cut congressional paychecks. Cut the tax breaks given to huge corporations.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 13:00:39 GMT -5
"But it would also be interesting to see if that would cause any riots, or threats of secession, or an overnight political movement to spring up to elect just enough people to ensure that things stay just the way they are after all, in all its madness. THAT never happens, does it?"
Huh??
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
Posts: 5,103
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:03:38 GMT -5
The big three are defense, medicare, and social security. You can't balance the budget without cutting all three. That's math. And that means cutting jobs, old people, the retired, the disabled, and the poor. Devil's in the details.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:08:43 GMT -5
"Huh??"
Not sure what part of that you didn't understand, sincerely.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
Posts: 5,103
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:14:09 GMT -5
ps., increasing taxes on the rich by 2% would get us about $700B. The budget shortfall is about double that. So... if we don't cut ANY spending to get there, do we take 2% from the next 10% of taxpayers or so? Do we take 4% instead of 2% from the top 2% of taxpayers? I guess we could do that.
I'll tell you what, I'll offer you the same deal I offered to a Tea Partier friend of mine, with whom, incidentally, I disagree about pretty much everything: Let's cut $4 for every dollar in tax raises on the rich. Does that work? He didn't take the deal because he refused any tax raises at all of any kind on anyone. What do you say? Whose benefits will you be willing to substantially cut in compromise for tax increases on the rich, to reach the shared goal of balancing the budget?
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 13:16:26 GMT -5
Social Security is good for another 30 years. Surely the kids of today won't mind if we inch them up a year or two older for retirement, just like they did we boomers. We don't get to retire, like our parents, at 65, we have to wait until 66. Medicare could be greatly helped by reducing fraud and the government seems to be forging ahead with that now. Big savings could be had also by letting the government bargain with pharma companies on drug prices. Like they do in other nations. Not sure how you want to cut medicare although it could be used as a thinning-of-the-herd technique. Which is pretty much how I see the US going. Why do all the cuts have to be in the social programs? Why can't spending on the things I listed before be done so that people would have good paying jobs and pay taxes and things would start to even out again? Why all these cuts to those who cannot afford them? Why can't the rich pay just a little more? Maybe as a donation???
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 13:24:33 GMT -5
Here you go, Pax. How 'bout "The Purple Plan"? I just skimmed it but it looks pretty good. Editor's note: Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economist, is a William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University, a columnist for Bloomberg and Forbes, and the author of 14 books including "Jimmy Stewart Is Dead" (John Wiley and Sons), "The Healthcare Fix" (MIT Press), and "The Coming Generational Storm" (co-authored with Scott Burns, MIT Press). Boston, Massachussetts (CNN) -- Our government is utterly broke. There are signs everywhere one looks. Social Security can no longer afford to send us our annual benefit statements. The House can no longer afford its congressional pages. The Pentagon can no longer afford the pension and health care benefits of retired service members. NASA is no longer planning a manned mission to Mars. We're broke for a reason. We've spent six decades accumulating a huge official debt (U.S. Treasury bills and bonds) and vastly larger unofficial debts to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits to today's and tomorrow's 100 million-plus retirees. The government's total indebtedness -- its fiscal gap -- now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations -- including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt -- and all projected future taxes. The data underlying this figure come straight from the horse's mouth -- the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO's June 22 Alternative Fiscal Scenario presents nothing less than a Greek tragedy. It's actually worse than the Greek tragedy now playing in Athens. Our fiscal gap is 14 times our GDP. Greece's fiscal gap is 12 times its GDP, according to Professor Bernd Raffelhüschen of the University of Freiburg. In other words, the U.S. is in worse long-term fiscal shape than Greece. The financial sharks are circling Greece because Greece is small and defenseless, but they'll soon be swimming our way. To grasp the magnitude of our nation's insolvency, consider what tax hikes or spending cuts are needed to eliminate our fiscal gap. The answer is an immediate and permanent 64% increase in all federal revenues or an immediate and permanent 40% cut in all federal noninterest spending. Such adjustments go miles beyond anything Congress and the president are considering. No wonder. They are focused on limiting growth in the official debt, while ignoring what's happening to the unofficial debt. To understand the thickness of their blinders, note that the fiscal gap, after inflation, grew by $6 trillion last year, whereas the official debt grew by only $1 trillion. Hence, our leaders are looking at one-sixth of the problem. The August budget ceiling crisis deal calls for $2.5 trillion in budgetary savings over the next ten years. President Obama is unveiling plans Monday to cut the debt by $3 trillion. Both of these are peanuts compared to what's needed to start eliminating the fiscal gap. There is a way forward to deal with both our fiscal mess and the economy, which is lying on the operating table in desperate need of open-heart surgery. Such surgeries are called radical because they require radical intervention. But they are also extremely safe compared with the alternative -- administering Band-Aids and letting the patient die. At www.thepurpleplans.org, I provide five radical, but absolutely essential plans to fix taxes, health care, Social Security, the financial system, and energy policy. Collectively, they would more than eliminate the fiscal gap and get our economy out of the emergency room and onto the racetrack. The plans are called purple because they should appeal to blue Democrats and red Republicans. If neither party adopts them, I guarantee that a third-party candidate running via www.americanselect.org will. The Purple Tax Plan is of particular relevance now, given Obama's decision to push for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and to levy a new tax on the super rich -- those with incomes above $1 million. The president wants to raise taxes. Can't argue with that. We desperately need much higher revenues along with much lower expenditures. Federal revenues measured as share of GDP are at a postwar low. And the president wants the rich to bear a bigger share of the tax burden. It's hard to disagree with this either. The rich have been getting off far too easy for far too long. But the Republicans want to ensure that more taxes don't mean more spending or smaller spending cuts than would otherwise arise. They also worry about high tax rates discouraging work, saving, and job creation by entrepreneurs. Most of us agree with both the president and the Republicans, which is possible because they're both talking past each other. But what we really want is a tax system that's simple, transparent, fair, and efficient. Neither the personal income tax, the corporate income tax, nor the estate and gift tax meet these criteria. Each is a bigger nightmare than the next. The Purple Tax Plan entails radical surgery. It eliminates the personal income tax, the corporate income tax, and the estate and gift tax. In their place it substitutes a highly progressive 17.5% federal retail sales tax plus a demogrant -- a monthly payment to each household, large enough that it reimburses the poor for the sales tax they've paid. (The 17.5% rate is the tax's nominal rate. Its effective rate is 15%, since 15 cents of every dollar spent goes to taxes and 85 cents to goods and services, with 15 divided by 85 equaling the 17.5% nominal rate.) If you're a Democrat, a sales tax, apart from the demogrant, probably sounds highly regressive. But nothing could be further from the truth. Taxing consumption is mathematically identical to taxing what's used to buy consumption, namely one's wealth and one's wages. Warren Buffett would effectively pay 15% on his wages, but also 15% on the principal of all his wealth, which is not now being taxed. The day the Purple Tax is implemented, Buffett will have the same number of dollars in wealth, but the purchasing power of his wealth will fall by 15%, thanks to the 17.5% higher costs of goods and services. And whether he spends his wealth on himself or gives it to his kids to spend, his wealth, plus any accumulated asset income, will buy 15% less in goods and services. The Purple Tax also makes the payroll tax highly progressive by eliminating its ceiling and exempting the first $40,000 in wages from the employee portion of the tax. Finally, the Purple Tax includes a 15% inheritance tax on inheritances and gifts received in excess of $1 million. Since the payroll tax is levied at close to a 15% rate, and the sales tax has an effective rate of 15%, and the inheritance tax rate is 15%, the Purple Tax plan imposes a single tax rate. This is very important for budgetary discipline. Under the Purple Tax, everyone will know that if Congress spends more on anything, the 15% effective tax rate will need to go up. The ongoing food fight between Obama and the Republicans is hiding the real game -- spending ever-larger sums on ourselves and leaving ever-larger bills for our kids. This fiscal child abuse must stop. The Purple plans would let both sides claim victory, save our kids, and get our economy back in the race. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Laurence J. Kotlikoff. www.cnn.com/2011/09/19/opinion/kotlikoff-us-debt-crisis/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
Posts: 5,103
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:25:20 GMT -5
All I know is that when it comes to spending, Defense, Social Security, and Medicare are far and away the biggest hogs, so they are the most natural places to start looking for ways to reduce spending. I don't care how it's done.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
Posts: 5,103
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:28:31 GMT -5
I'll have to study the purple plan a bit but offhand it doesn't sound bad. Politically unfeasible unfortunately.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 13:47:31 GMT -5
Politically unfeasible only until the complicit rise up and visit DC with pitchforks and torches in hand.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 19, 2011 13:57:18 GMT -5
On that day, I'll be among them. :-)
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 17:14:07 GMT -5
And I will be right next to you.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 19, 2011 17:17:41 GMT -5
But wait! Comes the day we throw out all the bums, THEN what do we do?? I know of no one who would make me a happy camper if she/he was to be our next president. Do you? (actually John Stewart did come to mind, with Colbert as vp of course )
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wheelspinner
Are We There Yet? Member
Nobody's perfect, I'm a nobody, so ...
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Post by wheelspinner on Sept 20, 2011 3:27:25 GMT -5
The amazing thing is that all the work has already been done. The NCFRR has produced an eminently-achievable plan that will get the budget back in balance (excleuding debt repayments) in 5 years. Its outcomes are superior to Obama's current plan on almost every measure.
All it needs is for a bunch of idiots to start putting their allegiance to their country ahead of their allegiance to Grover Norquist. It can't be that hard.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 20, 2011 8:54:52 GMT -5
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 9:56:43 GMT -5
Hard to think past "throw the bums out" to "which bums would we replace them with?" because that situation won't happen without an armed insurrection.
Anyway if there's any positive one can scrape off this, I will say that I think that a lot of good people refuse to even run because of the situation today. And for that matter I'm willing to bet that a large percentage of people in Congress on both sides would actually be much more amenable to actually running the country effectively if there wasn't such awful pressure from partisans below.
So I guess I'm saying that as long as we're fantasizing about things that will never happen, I wish for a political and cultural climate where (a) good people actually want to run for office and actually do get the job, and (b) where the people actually let them do it.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 20, 2011 10:45:41 GMT -5
Many "good people" who might want to run for office will never be able to because they just can't afford it. We need to get money out of politics. It will be a long time b4 that happens. But. . . I never say never. The uprisings in the middle east are proof that people can be held down for only so long b4 they bite back. I don't know if you've seen any of the flash mobs that are occurring here in the US but they could quickly get out of hand if more people knew about them. All it would take is the right leaders. Poor people have nothing left to lose and the middle class is quickly getting there. "Austerity" that affects only certain groups of people (poor/middle class, old, disabled, unemployed) is causing riots in other countries. We are next. I'm not sure who the "good people" are that you want to run for office. But I bet they would be different from "good people" I would want to run.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 11:25:08 GMT -5
You'd be surprised. I'd settle for 'competent.'
To be honest I don't know where I stand on the spectrum anymore. I think of myself as a progressive, but I think that's significantly far to the left of center-left, which I also think of myself as, and presumably I can't be both. And of course just raw disappointment with various well-meaning left-leaning programs, temporary or otherwise, that I once supported leaves me with no alternative but to seriously question their wisdom as solutions to future problems, such as bailing out "too big to fail" organizations, stimulus packages, etc. Even Medicaid -- not all of it, but my heartburn here is that there was a scandal a couple of months ago where some people went around to a dozen locations to apply to Medicaid, and posed as Russian mafia, and mentioned their $500,000 car. NOT ONE refused to help them apply. I'm all for Medicaid, people need it, but if there are no stops at all, if people aren't doing even the simplest core requirement of their jobs to make sure that the money actually gets to the people who need it and nobody else, then what's a liberal to do? I can't defend Medicaid in the face of Conservative complaints that it's heavily abused if confronted with such strong evidence that they have a point.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 11:27:49 GMT -5
ps., I do think that a seismic shift is coming, but I have no idea what form it will take, what the result will be, or what the trigger will be. I do think I will welcome it -- I hope.
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Pax
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 11:30:47 GMT -5
Oh, and one more thing -- people can afford to run if they manage to raise enough money, and if they start from the bottom, I think. I'd agree that a total unknown would have trouble raising the billion dollars it takes these days to run a presidential campaign. Personally I think the movement is more important than the guy in office anyway. They might have the power to sign the laws, but we have the power to boot them out, and politicians hate that. A cogent movement that constantly reminds the politicians that we're keeping an eye on them and WILL punish them when they act like jerks is what would hold the real power. To be honest, though I disagree with virtually everything they believe in, the Tea Party seems to have that kind of power right now. Progressives need to do the same thing. It'll be harder without a 24-hour news channel constantly beating the drums for them though.
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Pax
Are We There Yet? Member
quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 12:11:54 GMT -5
One more one other thing - I think affirmative action should be stopped at this point. It was started, what, thirty or forty years ago? Any impact it would have has been made already. At this point if its goals haven't been met they must be met through other means, because affirmative action isn't doing it.
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Post by patchoulli on Sept 20, 2011 12:53:54 GMT -5
"You'd be surprised. I'd settle for 'competent.'"
After the Bush years I also thought competent would do but not any more. I want fire-breathing radicals with energy and far-reaching ideas and who will bring on board other people like that, not just competent. But then, weirdly, I run exactly hot and cold on politics now. On one hand, I would love to see some sort of uprising come about in which the Koch brothers and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and those sorts of idiots are kicked to the curb. We got it done in the 60's so it isn't impossible. On the other hand I am getting worn out watching the left try to patiently battle the right and all their 'NO's. It worries me that that is exactly what they (the right) want. Sometimes I feel like just saying, "here, it's all yours, do with it what you will". I think it would end up such a mess that the republican party/tea party would forever be squashed and never heard from again. But what we would have to go through would be a hundred times worse than what is happening now. It would be like the christian version of sharia law if only the right were to rule.
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Pax
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quod erat demonstrandum.
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Post by Pax on Sept 20, 2011 13:56:06 GMT -5
If the GOP got everything they wanted, there'd be a revolution. THAT they wouldn't want, but the result would come about all the same.
I think this country would have been a far better place without Fox News and rightwing talk radio. It's poisoned the country; the inmates have control of the asylum.
I think between liberals and conservatives there is this: Conservatives emphaize self-reliance, for one, and also believe there is only one right way to do things. Liberals on the other hand emphasize shared goals and destinies, and also believe there is more than one way to do things. End result: Conservatives draw their lines, and liberals go along. I'd hate to see liberals lose their cooperativeness and diversity, but in the face of uncompromising conservatism, there may be no choice.
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