It’s not impossible Basso is being paid, but I’ll admit I don’t like the accusation very much, and to me, accusation of being a paid shill online is not a judgement to be made lightly. After all, there are people who really do believe that, that Obama hasn’t compromised and that any tax raises will destroy America and that a default is a good thing. Come on, most of us are from Houston, we should definitely know people outside the Internet who think like him.
Uh - have you read the text of the latest balanced budget amendment as written? Do you realize how incredibly stupid it is? Let me give you the short version - GDP declines 10%..let's assume tax revenues decline 10% - therefore the budget must decline 10%. This of course begets further economic declines (obviously cutting government spending 10% in a recession lowers GDP even further). This causes a retrenchment of government spending the next year proportional to the damage done by the previous years damage, and so on and so forth until we are all living in Bartertown. No because that's a stupid way to look at the problem. I mean logically, your train of thought is this, which has obvious defects 1. cut gov't spending so as to make "more efficient" 2. Services are cut 3. ????? 4. GDP growth and job creation! Second, in the abtract, who cares? If the government only provides 10% of police coverage, of course it's probably more efficient than what exists now on a per-unit basis. That doesn't mean it's an optimal outcome. Third, this has been tried dozens, if not hundreds of times in the past and has never ever ever ever ever worked on a macro scale. It's not working in Europe now, did not work here in 1936, and it has never worked in the past (unless you package it with a massive currency devaluation).
Obama has already said (sotto voce, to the banks) that there will be no default. so, all the granny scare stuff is just pure political theatre. Obama is playing politics, pure and simple, trying to kick the can down the road until after the election.
And of course, the leading intellectual lights of the Medicare Scooter Party have said otherwise: Ron Paul: Default Now or Pay Later
Well, uh, duh. Obama is not interested in a default and at the end of the day, has a trump card in the 14th Amendment that he can use to prevent it. I have no clue why this makes the efforts by the Republicans to basically create one in the name of principles not a bad thing.
A visual of Krugman's point... TX Rep. Louis Gohmert addressing today's "Hold the Line" Tea Party Rally. I count no less than 8 media outlets covering this "event."
Boehner on why Republicans should support his plan: So, he has, by his own words, offered a plan that is partisan in nature with no bipartisan appeal whatsoever. Yet in his Monday night speech, he used the word "bipartisanship" repeatedly. No news article I could find described his plan as partisan. The clsoest I could find were camparisons to Reid's plan using language like "competing plans." Yet if the Dems reject Boehner's plan there will be much crying from the Repubs about the lack of bipartisanship and the Democrats unwillingness to reach a compromise... all of which will be duly copied and pasted into news articles.
That's the way it's always going to be and that won't change unless rich people are asked to pay 300% in sales tax as compared to the 8.25 I pay when I go out and buy things. Guy who makes 100K a year buys buys $1,000 worth of goods in a month, they'll pay $82.50 in sales tax. Same situation but a guy earns 50K a year, obviously that $82.50 is a larger percentage of his income than the guy who earns 100. There is zero reason why the guy who makes more money should pay twice as much in sales tax simply because he makes more money. The lower income people always have, and always will pay more in taxes when compared to their income.
They might also reject turning the elderly into Soylent Green, but you should ask the Republicans to try that first. what's next, a return to the gold standard?
Yes I agree it should be, but clearly it is not getting done. I don't like the idea of having to amend the Constitution in order to have responsible spending, but I can't think of any other ideas. Our representatives are playing the game of brinksmanship with our national debt and budget as things stand today and it is just completely asinine. No, the world isn't going to end if we default or can't pay some bills in a few weeks, because the problem will get patched up somehow. However, the culture of shortsighted planning and inability to solve problems until they are on the verge of pushing us off a ledge is very unsettling.
Ask yourself this....why are Americans allowed to have deficits and deficit spending? Deficit spending of this magnitude is a luxury that we have because of our economy's and currency's status in the world. This is not sustainable over the long run. We can't just hope to abuse our powerful economic status by planning to run deficits for the next decade. And also...if deficit spending is just used to get ourselves out of recessions and fix the economy then why are we projecting large deficits for a decade? Doesn't that seem to indicate something else is very wrong? We can't just 'pass the buck' indefinitely. ...just my opinion....
Let's put it this way. If you make 15K a year for a family of four, you should pay the same % of tax as someone who makes 6 million a year right? They should all pay 20% or what ever it is. It doesn't matter that 15K a year for a family of four is going to be living on real hardship in many cities. You want people to go hungry or other hardships? Do you know why almost all revolutions in history are started?
Bingo. Economics 101. You raise spending during recessions and reduce it during booms. Unfortunately, the government didn't think that way a decade ago, and spent all our savings on a war and tax cuts.
Yes I truly think that's the way it is, that person earning 6 mil a year is paying 1.2M in taxes, they shouldn't pay more simply because another person doesn't make enough money. They're not using government paid streets or emergency professionals and whatnot more than the other family. One could argue he could be using less government assistance, he's already paying a million more than the people earning 15K. He should pay even more to use the same/less government benefits when compared to someone else?
