Financial Armageddon - a rant

I question the judgement of anyone who would pledge blanket opposition to an entire approach, especially before any details are proposed. Death penalty, abortion, tax increases, Social Security cuts; there's a time and place for everything. To flatly refuse to discuss, to consider or even allow discussing, a potential solution only limits one's options, and carries the potential to make one look like a fool and a hypocrite: "Read my lips: no new taxes!"

"I thought their allegiance was to the American people."

Seriously? You're mistaken. It's switched to party allegiance.

The Republican party has become anti-government.

What I don't understand is why people will vote for somebody who tells them up front that government is bad; if government is so bad, why do you want to be part of it?

So was it also irresponsible when the Democrats voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006?

Seems like Obama thought it was a terrible idea back then:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America???s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can???t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government???s reckless fiscal policies. ??? Increasing America???s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ???the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

What's changed?

Ideology being what done it in the first place, you mean.

The credit rating is already history. It's just that everybody is whistling and looking the other way. The US of A is the biggest that it gets. There is no larger sovereign to which to appeal.

We are it.

And, we're screwed.

In a case of standing in the shadow of what threatens to fall, I would counsel, step out of the way.

Only, in this case, the shadow is everywhere.

Yes, we're definitely on an unsustainable course, piling up federal debt. It has to be fixed. That doesn't mean the best time to do it is today, and it doesn't mean the only way to fix it is by slashing spending. In fact, that's the worst thing we can do.

When you have a recession, people are out of jobs. In a consumer economy, businesses don't create more jobs unless there are people with money to spend, ready to buy more product. If we respond to an economic downturn (the most important financial and employment crisis since 1929, incidentally) by firing millions of people in government and shutting down government contracts that employ millions more, the problem gets worse and stays bad longer. Government has to, at the least, keep the country working, hopefully at useful things.

People like Norquist have an unhealthy obsession about government; they think that government is the enemy of liberty, and that paying taxes is the ultimate in self-betrayal. I don't buy his crap. The Republican characters who are marching around demanding spending cuts to save us from indebtedness are really pushing a shrink government/shrink taxes phony medicine, which in the end will do the country enormous harm, and may bring on another serious recession. And, if it plays that way, like 1930 all over again, it will be then end of the Republican party's influence for decades.

Look, when you're in a lifeboat at sea, and you notice that the boat's had bad maintenance and some of the strakes are rotten, you don't go ripping it to pieces, on the grounds that now you need to repair that boat more than ever. You sail on to a secure shore, to better times, and then you proceed to rip out the bottom, when it's hauled up on the beach.

A like thought occurred to me, in the form of quantitative easing -- poison us all.

Does McConnell's 'fall back' plan to cede this decision to the President violate the separation of powers?

I'm not a Constitutional scholar and don't know the details. It's just a stray thought wandering through my head, finding it's surroundings empty and devoid of company, and will probably leave soon for a better lit and more hospitable environment.

"Deduction" -- betrays an ideological banality.

Nor does the rest of it bear any recognizable relation to what I thought I had been doing all my years in business.

In the Canadian example, we reduced the federal workforce over 3 years, and we didn't do it until after a recession had ended and the ecomony began to pick up steam. And we went from a big deficit every year to a surplus, helping us pay down the long term debt a little bit every year.

During this most recent recession, we went into deficit mode, but we will be back in a few years to surplus. Part of that was to acquire our share of GM, which we did to ensure that GM jobs stayed in Canada. If we had not ponyed up the money, Canadian plants would have closed before US plants, despite the high efficiency of some of them.

That's a conservatism that recognizes that the social order is fragile, that change must be incremental and paced, that humans are not perfectible, that the dark nature of people must be held back by laws so that liberty and prosperity are safe to come forth, and that society's reactions must be based on the actual facts that it faces, not guided by the dogma from somebody's book of holy dreams.

http://www.heritage.org/index/

We used to be 4th on the list.

Number 2 on the Heritage Foundation's list is Singapore. Singapore is one of the most regimented societies I've ever heard of. You can't chew gum on the street in Singapore. It's just about impossible to own a car or a home in Singapore. Everybody in Singapore pulls on his oar in the same direction and at the same time. Number 1 is Hong Kong, which at this point is the property of the Chinese state. The Communist Party in Beijing appoints the government these days. I'm not saying that economic freedom is a false ideal; countries that score well on the Heritage Foundation's scale have higher average income and higher growth than those that do poorly. But economic freedom does not equate to, or substitute for, the broad array of daily freedoms we as Americans thump our chests about.

I took a look at that site, I have seen it before but not recently.

I'm not saying they fudged the results, but if I were in Hong Kong(ranked 1), and not a wealthy businessman, I think I'd feel more free overall somewhere else. I wouldn't call Hong Kong a democracy really, and I think I'd sacrifice some of my economic freedom for personal freedom.

When I compared the US and Canada using the compare tool on that site, what struck me is that the US didn't drop like a stone and Canada didn't shoot up, its been rather gradual, and they could easily swap places in a few years.

I gotta ask, why?
Oh, and "socialist" Denmark is higher than the US?
You know, Denmark has a tax rate over 50% for the richest half of the population...

Re: [i]..... and "socialist" Denmark is higher than the US?
You know, Denmark has a tax rate over 50% for the richest half of the population... [/i]

I guess socialist Denmark does socialism better than a socialist United States. We both have socialism, you know, but perhaps to varying degrees. Perhaps people prefer to call it by another name (progressive, for example); although some people might not want to admit it.

But it illustrates my point. Over the past twenty years, the USA has fallen from 4th to 9th, in lockstep with both our decline into socialism and our accumulation of staggering debt. Remove socialism from the United States and we'd climb back up, to be sure.

Regarding Denmark's 50 percent highest tax bracket, when all tax is counted, I would guess that it's about the same in the USA. Our highest rate is currently 35 percent, but will rise to almost 40 percent without an extension being passed. Moreover, we also have individual state tax, the highest of which (I believe) is California, which levies an additional 10 percent (although a few states have no income tax at all). Moreover, Corporate tax rates are higher in the United States than in Denmark - 10 percent higher. As are Capital Gains taxes - zero in Denmark.

Hey, you guys do socialism better than we do in the USA. I don't want to compete with you in that regard. Return the USA to a nation of individual freedom and liberty, free markets, less government, less socialism, etc., and Denmark would be quickly eating our dust as we fly past them on the list.

Hmmmm....Damn Democrats and their out of control spending!!! lol

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday

One would think that the liberal media in the U.S. would pick up on this...huh...I guess they missed it.

Nothing is different over the past 50 years, why now?

I'll say.

Has to be where you get -- and repeat here -- your banalities, to include, "vast majority".

No, thank you.

it's always what "the other guys" won't do.

this boat's been sinking since 1951, the last time the national debt actually went down.

The terms of discourse, they are not working.

The round and around may as well be about abortion, or God, for all the good the terms. Witness the round and around in Washington.

Better, maybe, instead of poking a hole, we blow the bottom out the boat and sink the terms.

.... raising the debt ceiling, at least at this point in time.

Our credit rating will be determined more by our debt to revenue (GDP) percentage. The higher the debt goes - as a percentage of GDP - the more risk we assume regarding the downgrading of our credit rating.

You could argue, I suppose, that missing debt payments will also affect our credit rating, and I won't disagree. But like I said, we're WELL beyond that point. (Moreover, I don't buy into the soup de' jour they're selling.)

..... on what the definition of [i]is[/i] is.

"a looney tune, extremist, right-wing, wacko", having laid out grounds of agreement, been met with the outline of just such a "most basic" premise, only to look the other way and whistle unconcernedly.

..... you're not playing with a full deck. Something I've not really considered up until now. But it does indeed appear to be a real possibility. I've been remiss for overlooking that very distinct possibility.

As such, like I said, if I give you something to do, it's all good. I'm willing to do my part.

I would, however, go against you on the Poker table any day of the week.

Poker is bounded. So are you.

https://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/103-346225-3478795?tag=discussion-thread

And I will show compassion for the elderly who are mentally deranged.

Give your case a rest. In fact, supply it with a cane.

I can't tell if you were serious or intentionally posting nonsense. I might reply if it's the former - and if you'd care to translate.

[i]Re: Your bias is showing.[/i]

That's good. I wear my bias on my sleeve ready for all to see and ready to defend. It's those that try to hide their true bias who tend to engage in those circular arguments, or ones that otherwise only go round and round.

As a side note, the last person who said those exact words to me- [i]Your bias is showing[/i] - was a political science professor when I was in school. She wrote it on one of my papers as justification why the paper received a grade of only B+ instead of an A. The assignment was a book report on a book of my choice. I chose [i]An American Renaissance: Strategy for the 1980s[/i], by Jack Kemp. Jack Kemp was a Republican, a fiscal conservative, and influenced economic policy in the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Recovery_Tax_Act_of_1981

As one who went back to school later in life (in my 30s), I wasn't shy about pointing out to this very liberal professor that she is the one who inappropriately shows her bias every day in her lectures and opinions, and she apparently has a problem with someone who can argue in favor of an opposing view, instead of someone who can be molded like Play Dough to accept her views. She didn't change the B+ on the paper, but I did get an A in the class.

Maybe I should find that book and my paper and read them again. With the benefit of hindsight, it would be interesting to revisit.

A side note on my side note: I later attended several functions at which Kemp was either a speaker or attendee. I got him to autograph that book at one of those functions (held in the small town of Russell, Kansas), when he was formally announced as the vice presidential candidate in 1996.

but not from you.

In both cases, Reagan and Bush asked for (and got) increased spending to 'offset' the reduction in tax rates. The end result of both cases seems to be revenue decreased as a percentage of GDP while expenditures increased.

They lowered the tax rate to try to boost the economy, which failed, so we borrowed more money to try to boost the economy.

Personally I think the economy's going to do what it's going to do, and politicians can at best, not affect it and at worst, make things worse.

Yes, we avoided default and thats a good thing, but we have a Congress that can't make hard decisions. We are deeply in debt and the paltry deal just agreed to isn't going to make a dent in the debt. We haven't had the real conversation yet in Congress. Get rid of the partisan politics, pledges and hard stance ideologies and lets start from there. Every party's sacred cow is up for grabs, because the bottom line is that we are broke. Out of money, period.

Its a new day for everyone, and its gonna hurt. We were the ones that pigged out and its time to pay the piper. Either that, or pass it on to the next generation.

AV

I am afraid not.