Personally I am so frustrated with how selfish the people living in America at this point in time are. The Conservatives demanding lower taxes and higher spending. And the Liberals demanding even higher spending, more programs and higher taxes.
Isn't anyone actually fiscally responsible anymore? Don't our current citizens care if they are tying a big anchor to our children? Think about it.
Just imagine the simple stupidity of this whole situation. We all know the National Debt is too High, and that the SS, SSD and Medicare programs are unsustainable as is. And people on both sides are pointing fingers at each other while demanding cuts or expenditures that benefit them personally !!! One really can not make dysfunction like this up. 😖 When you see your kids or grand kids, I think you should beg their forgiveness.
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Isn't anyone actually fiscally responsible anymore? Don't our current citizens care if they are tying a big anchor to our children? Think about it.
- People think they deserve their full SS, SSD and Medicare benefits even though for decades they have not been paying high enough "premiums" (ie pay roll tax rates) to payout those desired benefits. The trust funds are going to crash soon and everyone is plugging theirs ears and covering their eyes.
- People think they should pay less in taxes, even while they desire more expenditures. This will lead to massive deficits in the coming years. And the idiot GOP folk can keep claiming that growth will close the gap, but Reagan and Bush II have proven big time that it does not work.
- And yes the majority of citizens from all parts of the spectrum contribute by either begging for tax cuts or handouts.
Just imagine the simple stupidity of this whole situation. We all know the National Debt is too High, and that the SS, SSD and Medicare programs are unsustainable as is. And people on both sides are pointing fingers at each other while demanding cuts or expenditures that benefit them personally !!! One really can not make dysfunction like this up. 😖 When you see your kids or grand kids, I think you should beg their forgiveness.
CNN House DEMs Face Choice
VOX House DEMs Demand DACA Vote
FOX News Pelosi Demands
FOX News What Is In the Deal
40 comments:
If we believed the national debt was too high, we wouldn't pass what has been described as the largest tax cut in history. I am not a big logic guy, but there just isn't any form of logic that finds that acceptable.
--Hiram
Said another way, the whole argument here is based on the phrase "we all know." Obviously we do NOT know, and our betters in Washington have done everything possible to keep us from knowing.
If you keep insisting that we can tax our way to prosperity, then consider my proposal to pay off the total debt and unfunded liabilities of the country in just 8 years, by raising the federal tax rate to 100%. Seems to me we have a spending problem.
"There is no limit to the amount of good that can be done with somebody else's money."
Of course "we all know", the problems are:
- that we just don't care enough to do make the sacrifices
- we are self righteous and blame those other people
You just supported a large tax cut in the midst of an economic boom while we were $20+ Trillion in debt. What are we thinking?
Booms are when we should be paying down debt, not taking more on!!!
The Liberals want to take on more poor illegal and legal immigrants when our own poor struggle. What are we thinking?
Taxes are just a form of spending. I do think we can spend our way to prosperity. If we don't spend money, the economy will grind to a halt. What makes the difference is how we spend money. Do we spend money in a way that efficiently generates economic activity?
One of the cool things about debt is that we have a strategy for making it go away. It doesn't have to hamper economic activity going forward. Ir's why it's never been one of the thing that has terrified me about the future.
--Hiram
"Taxes are just a form of spending."
Yes I understand that in your world view there really is no concept of private and public accounts... It is just "the USA is wealthy"...
By the way, it seems the kids have benefited from a lot of that debt. It's not as if they are chipping in for the schools. They didn't pay for the interstate highways. They weren't even around for WW II.
--Hiram
One would think for all that debt we would have something great to show for it... And our country's infrastructure earned a D+ grade.
"One would think for all that debt we would have something great to show for it..."
And the Roman Coliseum isn't useful for its purpose anymore. What's your point? You can't just build something and not continue to spend money to keep it working.
Moose
And please remember that it had been falling until ~1980...
So it is really the Baby Boomers and Gen X who have screwed things up...
Moose,
Please remember the crux of the problem, we are actively spending far more than we are collecting. If we are not keeping things up it likely means we are not spending on the correct things. And/or we are not collecting enough.
My point was that if we gave the kids a big mortgage and an excellent house that would be better than today where we seem to be okay giving them a well used house and a huge mortgage.
Well that and a bunch of Grandmas / Grandpas upstairs who are broke because they did not work, save and/or invest hard enough.
you seem to have great difficulty understanding that it is extremely difficult for low income people to save and invest $. Your superiority gets a bit tiresome.
Republicans want to turn the entire country into Oklahoma
Laurie,
Same old question...
Why are low income people low income people?
Here is a more analytical explanation
Your lack of belief in the capabilities of these people and that they need to stay dependent gets a bit tiresome. :-)
As for Oklahoma and the States around it, they have been low income for a long time. Not sure if politics is the primary causal factor.
How about we compare MN, IA, WI, SD and ND? Please note that they are all pretty great.
MN ranks 40th among the states in economic freedom. Start there. And maybe consider again the hierarchy of spending, in which government spending--spending somebody else's money on a third party-- is last among the four in efficacy.
I assume this Right Leaning Group is your Source.
I find this quote most amusing...
"Research shows that economic freedom is positively correlated with per-capita income, economic growth, greater life expectancy, lower child mortality, the development of democratic institutions, civil and political freedoms, and other desirable social and economic outcomes."
Since the Map at the Main Source pretty clearly shows that many of their "worst" States are some the healthiest and wealthiest States in the Union.
I think their research needs some further research...
And some of their "most free" states are pits of poverty...
What a big BABY... :-)
Trump says we were forced to raise spending
Wasn't this the guy who recently said he would be happy if the government shutdown?
In June, the CBO estimate for the deficit in 2019: $689B.
Now: $1.2T
... The Aristocrats!
Just for context: the increase in defense spending is more than the cost of Bernie's "free college for everybody" idea.
Interesting...
CNN Money Free College
"Both the federal government and states would pick up the cost of the program under this proposal. The federal government would pay an estimated $41 billion a year to states to cover 67% of the cost. It would raise the money by taxing stock market trading. States would be on their own to pay for the rest."
"On average, tuition at four-year public colleges cost about $10,000 a year. Free-tuition plans don't cover the cost of room and board, which cost students another $10,000 a year if they live on campus. Tuition at community colleges cost $3,500, on average."
"Free-tuition proposals have a variety of critics. Some public colleges worry they'll be overburdened by a hike in enrollment and won't get any additional funding for support services. Private colleges in New York claim that making tuition free at public colleges creates unfair competition.
Others say that the plans don't do enough to help the poorest students, who already don't pay for tuition because of federal Pell Grants and state aid. And some say making tuition free could be a waste of money on students who don't really want to get a college degree and enroll for a year or so before dropping out. (The Rhode Island proposal addresses that concern by making only the last two years of public college free.)
But advocates claim that one of the biggest benefits of free tuition is that it encourages people to apply to college who didn't think they could afford it before, even if they do qualify for other aid."
Whether or not free college is a good idea, remember that much of the reaction to it was "There goes crazy Uncle Bernie, offering this unaffordable program" (never mind that he proposed how to pay for it). But we found the money (plus some) for other purposes with minimal fuss and no pay-fors.
If we can find this kind of money to tack on to the military budget, why can't we do *something* to help make college more affordable? We've got over $1.4T locked up in student loan debt, which is a massive drag on the economy.
So if one takes the $41 Billion and adds the state portion I get $61 Billion total spend.
If I divide it by $12,000 per student to cover tuition and program management I come up with this funding ~5,000,000 students per year. I wonder how many people would take advantage... I am guessing it would be a lot more than that a first.
Oops... Year 2, 3, 4 no one else could enter the program... (ie 4 year program...)
I think they are under budgeting.
It looks like we spend about 5% of the country's GDP on K through upper Ed.
How is that working out for us?
~1.5% on Higher Ed.
I am not concerned about spending to reduce the cost of education.
I am worried about:
- Public Employee Unions wasting that money
- School Administrations wasting the money
- Students taking fluff courses that do not help the USA compete globally
That is interesting.
We spend more on Education than Defense as is...
Education: $1.1 Trillion
National Defense: $0.9 Trillion
I'm not arguing the mechanics of how you would do it right now -- all I'm saying is that it's not really that expensive to do something substantial to help make college more affordable. We find more money to do other things all the time. We found more money than that for the corporate tax cuts Congress just passed over the next decade.
Even if you could "only" make college free for 5 million students or cut the cost in half for "only" 10 million students, wouldn't that be a huge victory?
Former Sen. Edward Dirksen of Illinois (I think I'm attributing it correctly) said, "A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money" that was back in the 60s. Now it's a BILLION here and a BILLION there. The point isn't the price tag, it's whether it is something we all benefit from and that government is uniquely qualified to do.
Sean,
You are correct that we can find money... That is why the cost of government went from 10% to 37% of GDP over the last 100 years.
Remember that poor frog that you would like to boil...
I am happy to return the spend to 33% and then reprioritize where we are spending.
If we can't change the madness, maybe we should laigh about it.
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Or, you know, it's been nearly five months since the hurricane hit Puerto Rico and 1 million people still don't have power.
Maybe we could prioritize that instead of making sure that Exxon gets a tax cut.
We are doing something about it. We are privatizing the power system in PR, and handing out school vouchers.
And again, taxes are not about punishing the rich or helping the poor. They are about raising the necessary revenue for government, in the most simple and fair way possible.
I am not sure what to do about Puerto Rico. They should be a wealthy territory and yet they have struggled historically. I agree the Feds need to help, but I think they need to own some of this mess.
VOX PR Power
"But Puerto Rico’s power grid has been creaking for years. The local government’s crippling debt of more than $73 billion and PREPA’s own obligations of $9 billion made it hard to keep up with critical maintenance like trimming tree branches away from power lines, let alone make upgrades to make the energy network. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority has also faced accusations of corruption and nepotism in its management, leading the island’s utility to neglect its responsibilities."
Same philosophical question... When an unsuccessful person or territory squanders their potential, what the duty of society to bail them out?
We ask, "how are you going to fix this mess? I will help you some, but you have to do it." Sounds like they have made a couple good steps already, that cost us nothing so far. Obviously they'll need some help to get it going, but just giving it to them to perpetuate the wrong ways isn't helping.
"They should be a wealthy territory and yet they have struggled historically."
What's the basis for your claim that they should be "wealthy"?
Beautiful Island, Beautiful Ocean, American Territory, Near USA Mainland, etc...
It seems corruption has been one of their biggest problems.
"It seems corruption has been one of their biggest problems."
First off, the Caribbean is not a wealthy region.
Second, yes, corruption is a problem.
Third, U.S. policy has been a significant factor. In 1976, Congress passed a provision that allowed profits from Puerto Rican subsidiaries to be repatriated as dividend income instead of regular income. This encouraged development on the island but it was reliant on that provision staying in place. When it was repealed in 2006, investment fled the island -- only one year since has seen positive growth in the economy. This is combined with other issues, such as the fact that Puerto Rican bonds are (per a 1917 law) "triple tax exempt", meaning they can't be taxed by federal, state, or local authorities, which makes them very attractive to bond issuers even as the island's fiscal scenario deteriorates. PR is also covered by U.S. minimum wage laws (in most cases) which makes them less competitive in the region. There's also the Jones Act which prohibits foreign ships from delivering goods to the island. That's just for starters.
Yes there are many reason for their poverty. Some out of their control and some self inflicted.
CNN PR Debt
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