America is not broke...

America is not broke?

Dave Ramsey had a nice analogy....

Imagine you had household income of $58,000 per year, but spent $75,000 per year plus had $327,000 in credit card debt.....now assume you decided to solve your financial problems by cutting your spending down to $72,000 per year....your problem would be solved, right?

Supposedly these numbers are proportional to the national financial mess.....


Lets see:
310,000,000 people
$14,000,000,000,000 debt
$100,000,000,000,000-$200,000,000,000,000 unfunded SS/Medicare obligation
Obamacare?
Money in the Al Gore lockbox = $0 [shhhhhhhhhhhh...don't let the leftists hear this]

Broke? Originally Posted by Marshall

Bur the analogy, who ever the political hack you quote is, is fundamentally flawed. The government's income isn't fixed. Tax rates are at a sixty year low. If you were to return the tax rates to their historical averages, government tax receipts would rise and the largest portion of the short fall would disappear. If you combined that return to normal rates with fundamental tax reform that made it harder to avoid taxation, you would solve all the problem. Then, eliminate the two ridiculous wars of choice that we are fighting, and loosing, and you have a surplus that can be devoted to solving some modest, but legitimate demographic issues with our long term safety net programs.

More disturbing from a moral standpoint is that the debt that has been run up in the era of unprecedented low taxation has been used to provide tax breaks to those like me who have very large incomes. Or worse, to give it to people who make even more than me, and regularly earn more than seven to nine figures a year, thus aiding in creating the largest government driven transfer of wealth in history -- all upward.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. Originally Posted by pjorourke

LMFAO!!!!

just wait till the world decides the dollar bill will not be the world's reserve currency any longer.....

Bur the analogy, who ever the political hack you quote is, is fundamentally flawed. The government's income isn't fixed. Tax rates are at a sixty year low. If you were to return the tax rates to their historical averages, government tax receipts would rise and the largest portion of the short fall would disappear. If you combined that return to normal rates with fundamental tax reform that made it harder to avoid taxation, you would solve all the problem. Then, eliminate the two ridiculous wars of choice that we are fighting, and loosing, and you have a surplus that can be devoted to solving some modest, but legitimate demographic issues with our long term safety net programs.

More disturbing from a moral standpoint is that the debt that has been run up in the era of unprecedented low taxation has been used to provide tax breaks to those like me who have very large incomes. Or worse, to give it to people who make even more than me, and regularly earn more than seven to nine figures a year, thus aiding in creating the largest government driven transfer of wealth in history -- all upward. Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Somebody hasn't done his historical economic homework.....Kennedy, Reagan and Bush tax breaks led to higher tax receipts......What you Keynsians fail to take into account is that when you change the tax rate, people change their behavior.....The libs in Maryland are my favorite recent example....Maryland institutes a millionaires tax.....guess what happened?.......one third of the millionaires left the state and tax revenue went down.....brilliant!

God I love static revenue analysis.

God I love static revenue analysis. Originally Posted by pjorourke

Doesn't work very neatly in the real world, does it?

Speaking of the real world, Obama has backed himself into a corner by promising not to increase taxes on anyone making less than about $250K annually. Everyone who understands the issue knows you can't raise much revenue without doing just that.

Spending has exploded out of control, having increased from about $1.8 trillion in 2000 to $3.7 trillion today. Even adjusted for inflation, that's about a 60% increase. It looks like no one has any intention of doing anything meaningful in the way of reducing the deficit. Democrats and Republicans are bickering over whether to cut $10 billion or $60 billion from the upcoming year's budget, against the backdrop of a $1.6 trillion deficit.

That's why I think we're hurtling toward a fiscal crisis sooner rather than later, and that it could make the gravity of the financial crisis of 2008 pale
in comparison.

Doesn't work very neatly in the real world, does it?

Speaking of the real world, Obama has backed himself into a corner by promising not to increase taxes on anyone making less than about $250K annually. Everyone who understands the issue knows you can't raise much revenue without doing just that.

Spending has exploded out of control, having increased from about $1.8 trillion in 2000 to $3.7 trillion today. Even adjusted for inflation, that's about a 60% increase. It looks like no one has any intention of doing anything meaningful in the way of reducing the deficit. Democrats and Republicans are bickering over whether to cut $10 billion or $60 billion from the upcoming year's budget, against the backdrop of a $1.6 trillion deficit.

That's why I think we're hurtling toward a fiscal crisis sooner rather than later, and that it could make the gravity of the financial crisis of 2008 pale
in comparison. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

you haven't been paying attention to all the tax increases we got hit with over the past 2 years.....those people under $250K are taking it right up the a**.....do they know it yet?

you haven't been paying attention to all the tax increases we got hit with over the past 2 years.....those people under $250K are taking it right up the a**.....do they know it yet? Originally Posted by Marshall

Recent tax increases on the non-affluent don't come close to equalling the tax cuts they've received over the last ten years. I expect that to change soon enough, though!

Revenue-hungry politicians have to go where the money is.

Recent tax increases on the non-affluent don't come close to equalling the tax cuts they've received over the last ten years. I expect that to change soon enough, though!

Revenue-hungry politicians have to go where the money is. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

The non-affluent received tax cuts over the past 10 years?!!!! I'm shocked, just shocked I say....damn that Bush!

BYW: you know what they call the Clinton years?.....sex between the Bushes

When gas goes up a dollar the affluent think it's worth it. People won't waste so much and the air will be cleaner. The rest of us say "FUCK!" the work commute is more expensive. Food costs go up. (And have a lot recently.)
Tax increases on the non affluent (increases in every day commodities and services) are a very real burden and the affluent haven't even noticed.
There are all kinds of taxes.

Food costs are going up because we are burning food in our cars. How fucking stupid is that.

Food costs are going up because we are burning food in our cars. How fucking stupid is that. Originally Posted by pjorourke

It is caustic to car parts as well, gets poorer mileage, puts carbon and C02 in the air as a byproduct of it's creation.

Yes but the Iowa corn farmers love it.

Tax increases on the non affluent (increases in every day commodities and services) are a very real burden and the affluent haven't even noticed.
There are all kinds of taxes. Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

Although commodity price increases are not tax increases per se, you do make a very good point because, as many people have noted over the years, currency debasement can act like a "stealth tax" and has even been called the cruelest tax of all.

Bad government policy (too much deficit spending) has more or less forced unprecedentedly accommodative monetary policy (the extension of QE as well as the continuation of ZIRP). Policymakers are obviously worried about inadequate demand for net new Treasury debt issuance and the Fed is expanding its balance sheet and taking down the bulk of new issuance of 7s and 10s with newly-printed money -- to the tune of about $75 billion per month.

What happens when this practice ends, as it eventually must?

I don't think anyone really wants to know, but you can bet that politicians and the Fed will maintain a full-court press in order to try to kick the can down the road for as long as possible.

Do you see anyone with the balls to stand up and tell Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America that we need to impose a European-style tax system, possibly including a VAT, so that they'll have to pay for all the spending increases of recent years?

Yes but the Iowa corn farmers love it. Originally Posted by pjorourke

And as long as the Iowa Caucuses play such an important role in kicking off presidential campaigns and giving candidates momentum going into the primaries, you can count on the ethanol boondoggle continuing.

VAT -