Ok then taxes are going up. I read somewhere last week that the total of liquid assets (not real property) equaled $132,00 per person. This country is not stretched for money, we just spend it unwisely rather than invest it where it shows returns. Like the F35 or the USS Ronald Reagan instead of fixing the VA or rebuilding our own infrastructure.
That's fine, but one of the two has to happen. If you drastically raise taxes, it will likely hurt the economy which could also cause budget shortfalls along with angering the people to where you get voted out in favor of someone who will cut taxes. If you cut spending, it'll anger the people to where you will get voted out in favor of someone who will raise spending. It's really hard for anyone to do the right thing because the people only care about their own personal short term interests.
Also, since the costs of those programs keep going up every year higher than the rate that the economy is growing, you'll have to keep raising taxes pretty much every year to keep pace. How long do you think someone could pull that off before being run out on a rail?
I liked how Bernie stuck to his principles when everybody went full derp on him over not backing lawsuits against gun manufacturers.
This is so far over your average democrat's head. The reason democrats always suggest raising taxes is because they won't have to pay for the tax increases. The top 20% of wage earners pay 80% of all income taxes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/opinion/the-republicans-incompetence-caucus.html?smid=fb-share The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about? This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own. By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love. All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple. This produced a radical mind-set. Conservatives started talking about the Reagan “revolution,” the Gingrich “revolution.” Among people too ill educated to understand the different spheres, political practitioners adopted the mental habits of the entrepreneur. Everything had to be transformational and disruptive. Hierarchy and authority were equated with injustice. Self-expression became more valued than self-restraint and coalition building. A contempt for politics infested the Republican mind. Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests. But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal. A weird contradictory mentality replaced traditional conservatism. Republican radicals have contempt for politics, but they still believe that transformational political change can rescue the nation. Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change! As Steven Bilakovics writes in his book “Democracy Without Politics,” “even as we expect ever less of democracy we apparently expect ever more from democracy.” This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity. In his masterwork, “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber argues that the pre-eminent qualities for a politician are passion, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion. A politician needs warm passion to impel action but a cool sense of responsibility and proportion to make careful decisions in a complex landscape. If a politician lacks the quality of detachment — the ability to let the difficult facts of reality work their way into the mind — then, Weber argues, the politician ends up striving for the “boastful but entirely empty gesture.” His work “leads nowhere and is senseless.” Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus. Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong! People who don’t accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won’t respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction. These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around.
Yes as opposed to Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina on the right, LMAO. Those people are insane to say the least and your comment is a stretch of imagination. Atleast the left can say Lincoln Chaffee is registering at less than %1. The right has Donald Trump and Ben Carson with about %60 of the vote, lol. Pathetic.
Did cutting taxes boost the economy and raise income for the middle class? No, it didn't. It just allowed accumulations of wealth and corporate power that distorted the balance of political power so that the wealthy and corporations could create a system that eliminates regulation and exposes us to risks that eventually have to be paid for by the public. Taxing the wealthy to invest in education and infrastructure actually helps the economy. Economic growth comes from money in motion throughout the system and through innovation and efficiency. I don't think this goes over the head of the wealthy and corporate leaders, I think they know it, but have a short-sighted interest in their own greed. The greatest growth periods in this nations history have come when taxes were much higher than the recent tax rate reductions made them. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/10/does-taxing-the-wealthy-hurt-growth.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonard...l-gains-tax-rates-and-economic-growth-or-not/
My take with an assist from one analyst I saw discussing things after the debate. Hillary was great considering what she has to work with which is the status quo. I was impressed at how well she handled the dynasty type question with respect to Clintons that Jeb fumbles so poorly wrt to the Bush Dynasty. The analyst thinks Hillary shored up her support with her heavy funders and supporters and is still at the top of her game. Biden will probably realize he has no space left in the Dem Party environment to run in. Sanders also did fine as he firmed up his support with his voters. The other three guys are irrelevant. It is Bernie vs. Hillary. O'Malley would make a good VP for Hillary and is similar with his politico like slickness and his status quo type policies as well as his attempt to repackaged himself as a progressive. Hillary is starting to attack Bernie and he will have to fight back. Hillary through Bill and Obama essentially supported the big banks and the financial deregulation and policies that led to middle class decline with all the wealth going to the top. I understand that the GOP was the driving force, but with the Dem turn to also receive a cut of Wall Street money they resisted weakly at best. Obama and Bill had the main culprits of the 2008 financial debacles working in their Cabinets. Similarly with Bill and Hillary NAFTA, and the TTP and all the trade deals which contributed to job flight overseas. Hillary flat out lied about her not supporting the TTP until a week or go or so. Hillary voted for the colossal Iraq blunder leading to ISIS and the resulting cluster**** over there. If you are basically satisfied with the status quo Hillary is your girl for the Dems and Jeb is your guy in the GOP. Bernie can appeal to the roughly half of the electorate that doesn't vote as they don't think it is worthwhile.. This is mainly the poor, lower middle class and young that are widely seen as potential Dem voters. . Hillary will at best keep the electorate small unless the GOP nominates a sufficiently looney candidate to increase the turnout. Frankly I don't see any of the GOP candidates being that frightening or appealing that they will effect overall voter turnout.
Paul is a far right extremist, just a different extreme than others. He is a Libertarian. My 2 favorite candidates are Paul and Sanders, despite a huge difference in economic policies. I trust them. They both stand for the people.
If Bernie Sanders wins the democratic nomination, I will vote for whatever monster the Republicans nominate. They could dig up the bloated and maggot filled corpse of Barry Goldwater.
Paul might brand himself as a populist, but the fact of the matter is that there is really not a whole lot that is arguably populist about his policies, most of which focus on allowing the powerful to benefit at the expense of the powerless. That's about as anti-populist as it gets. And no, silly conspiracy theories about the federal reserve and being a relative isolationist on foreign policy don't make you a populist either.
I like how Republicans think they know how the economy works, when historically they've been pretty wrong.
