The congress spends the money, not the potus. Learn your civics.

[Kasz216]

spaceguy said:

Kasz216 said:

 

I just note how some of these things theoretically could succeed, i just wouldn't want them to.

When it comes to economics... i'll put it this way.  John Manyard Keynes is touted as the big left wing economist of note.   If he were alive today he would be shouting at Obama that you can't raise taxes on anybody while the economy is so weak.   Essentially the current Obama proposal isn't based on any economic theory, not even the most left wing economic theory.  It's not based on any economics at all, but instead based on a sense of fairness, bad economic consequences be damned. 

As preivously stated, I would of allowed the banks to have failed, not exactly mainstream economic  matieral.  Or at the very least required regional breakups in return for the bailout funds.  I tend to think Modern economists focus too much on big numbers like Keynes famous Aggregate demand formula and forget that economies are made up of people... and that people change generationally.   Meaning that every crisis is going to be different, because every consumer group is different.  As such, the safest way to ride out downturns is to ride them out naturally with a modest increase in spending so that we can make sure that nobody is starving in the streets.  (but at a payout lower then unemployment, imagine a middle step between unemployment and welfare.)

 

In general, I think that an ideal kind of government looks a lot like New Zealands with a little more personal freedom mixed in... with an icelandic attidue of... if a bank fails, let it fail.

The problem is, you need to tear down, before you build up.  The US has so much worthless and wrongheaded regulations that rise the cost of compliance for companies and that's why you end up with massive too big to fail insitutions.

This is why the five US banks that held assets equal to 43% of the country's GDP now hold 56%.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/obama-bid-to-end-too-big-to-fail-undercut-as-banks-grow.html

The US does have a huge deficit problem, and deficits in general can only be solved via spending cuts, as tax raises time and time again have shown an increase in spending to go along with them, even when done for budget saving purposes.

 

A correct path would be to cut government spending practically everywhere, eliminate whole areas if need be, while essentially writing the countries regulations over from a blank slate.  Then watch the real economy grow.

Followed by a consolidation of welfare programs (as right now they are so split up the overhead is ridiculious) and work from there. 

 

In general, I would support libretarians (not regular conservatives for various social reasons) to gain control of the government for a good 8 years or so, to take down everything, then would hope they would be replaced for new more sane regulations, laws, and policies.   (Though i think i'd keep the negative income tax.  It seems far more efficent then what we do now.)

Reagan was a big part of allowing the banks to get to big, he stopped enforcing the sherman Anti-trust act. Also tax's have to go up. All the loopholes are mainly there for the rich to access, not the poor. People that sit by the pool collecting checks like paris hilton while only paying 15% tax's on investments is not right. 

I completely agree our defense is out of control, as the pentagon is not auditable.  Some estaments put the defense including the pentagon close to a trillion dollars a year.

I would not tare down what we got, I think there needs to be rules of who can work for what and where. For instance, if you work for GE, you can't go regulate for GE. I think the biggest way to have a effect is also to do campaign finance reform.

Cut the defense budget and have public funded campaign finance, Put a cap on it and People/corporations only allowed to give $250 or less. This will make the politicians work for the people, not there corporate funders. Which we have a massive problem on both sides.

SS has not contributed, so no need to cut that. SS is already paid for and all you would have to do is raise the SS cap to 250,000 or higher to make it solvent.

Medicare part D that doesn't allow us to barter for drug costs,  is costing us  billions of dollars a year.

Yes we should have put bankers in jail just like Iceland. I don't have issue with the bailout as much as there was no strings attached to it. Like Splitting up the banks and more regulations. Which I know we disagree.

Iceland also raised tax's and cut costs. I agree that we have a spending problem. I think mainly in the defence budget. Thats what i would gut. Sorry But we only need so much.

If we do these things we should be good.

Cheaper capital gains taxes are pretty much a halmark of all first world countries.  If you raise the taxes on them, you'll be KILLING the middle class whose pension funds and retirment funds are in the stock market... and really who's only gains are there.  Additionally it's worth noting that captial gains taxes like that only apply to holdings that are held greater then 1 year.   Your average "Flash" trader is being taxed on normal income.  

I don't believe Iceland actually put their bankers in jail.  Just let them fail.  As for the defense budget.  You'd never actually get near enough cuts from it.  You NEED to handle medicare, medicaid and social security.  Those are the real causes of the budget deficit... at least some military spending somewhat pays for itself.

Social Security isn't actually paid for.  You'd think it's paid for with the social security taxes but all of that social security money is already spent... replaced with special treasury bonds which are essentially nothing but an accounting trick. 

You can tell this is the case because during the debt ceiling debate Obama said the first thing that would happen when we went over the cliff is that nobody would get their social security payments. There is no big vault full of social security money that gets doled out.  There is nothing there but treasury bonds, which is exactly what all of our other debt is held in.  (well the social security treasury bonds are actually worse then your average bond but that's another thread.)

It's funny how quick policy positions on this shifted...  as it was Al Gore who used to talk about saving Social Security and stopping "politicians from raiding social security". 

All the social secrutiy trust fund holds is debt, more or less IOU's which will be the first one broken because they don't consider it a default when you screw your own people. 

Which by the way is why... once we have a balanced budget or a surplus I would try to transition us over to a sensible plan like most other coutnries, where we invest our nations pension funds in stocks and bonds.  Rather then the government just paying it out of pocket after buying IOU's from itself then spending the money on whatever they feel like.

The reason why this tends to not show up in a lot of left wing sites on the debt is leftwing people tend to not include intragovermental debt, argueing that a government can't owe itself money... which is really no consolation to the people who will lose out on social security.