We've been over the cliff for a long time. America's best days have long since passed. Nearly half of us don't even pay any income tax anymore. We don't make things anymore, we import everything we buy and we're nowhere near being competitive on a global level.

Don't worry, once it collapses the same people who brought the country to greatness before will do so again - Americans. The sooner the better, hopefully. We need to get rid of the federal reserve and have a real central banking system accountable to the people. The private/public hybrid that is the federal reserve is what got us into the mess in the first place and it's what keeps us in this mess. The government should be able to put us more and more into debt because it pays for more than it can pay for. 

Finally an agreement..Now the only thing that is left is to vote..

Before I start responding - please, use the numbers I've put in, rather than inserting your response into my post. Otherwise, it just gets too messy with all of the nested quotes and adjusted replies, etc. And it takes me more time to filter through it to realign it as you see above.

1. What control is it taking over your life? It's easy to proclaim that the government is trying to take more control, but the fact of the matter is, there is very little control that America is taking over the lives of those who don't want any interference at all. Mandatory insurance is like regular income tax - it's a way to make sure you pay for things you use, as well as helping to cover those who can't afford it. The alternative would be to let many poor people die due to lack of healthcare. The difference with the Obamacare fine is that you only have to pay it if you don't have private health insurance. I really fail to see the harm in that.

2. I spoke about Australia's Medicare system, and you responded "Seems like a solution to the concern I just brought up".

Regarding the Obamacare fine, you don't seem to understand. The government is already providing you the service. They already pay the costs of emergency healthcare for people who don't have private health insurance. This is just the government finally saying "if you can afford it, then you aren't getting a free ride anymore". Indeed, what it's doing is means-testing this public health insurance that is secretly lying underneath your system, to keep it from completely failing. And stop saying that they're being "punished". They're being expected to pay for a service they're already getting. Also the government doesn't tell you WHAT to buy - they just require that you have some sort of health insurance. If you aren't going to buy private health insurance, then you're going to pay for public health insurance. Why? Because you're already getting that insurance, by virtue of living in America. The alternative would in fact be DEATH PANELS. People whose job it is to determine, when someone is brought into an emergency room, whether they have the insurance or money available to cover the costs of saving their life. Does that sound reasonable to you?

As for how Australia's government handles the situation if more poverty occurs... well, it's the government's job to work on reducing poverty, so if they're failing that, the result will actually be that the government gets voted out at the next election, well before poverty gets so high that it's a huge burden on the system. Stop blaming your government for doing things for you (as a nation, not as an individual), and start blaming them for when they fail to do so. As for what's covered by public health insurance, look here.

3. Americans are too obsessed with concepts like "federal government means less freedom". No, it f'ing doesn't. The federal government is by the people, for the people. YOU (as a people) get to choose who runs your government, and federal influence is a way to help to STANDARDISE things so that things get better for everyone. Let me give you an example of a failure of state governments in Australia, to make my point. New South Wales built a rail system. Queensland built a rail system. The two states, idiotically, chose two difference gauges for the tracks. As such, there cannot be trains running from Brisbane to Sydney - you have to change trains at the border (and they're only now working on setting that up - there's no joint station, yet). Had the federal government been involved, they would have made sure both states used the same gauge, and it would have been a better result for everyone.

State government is supposed to deal with things that naturally vary between states - things like different makeup of the economy, different environmental concerns, etc. Education is a universal issue, and the federal government SHOULD be interfering. So again, I say it - stop blaming the government for trying to do things for the people, and start blaming them for when they fail to do so.

4. 100 years ago was a very different situation. There was barely a police force. Education was low quality with most girls not even getting an education. Health care was limited at best. There was no internet, no phone, no power system. Economies were primarily local, and international economic activity was barely even heard of. Tourism was uncommon, it took months to travel overseas, and the population was much, much smaller. Obesity was extremely rare, most food was organic and direct from the farm, and there wasn't much by way of a banking system, just individual banks servicing local areas. It's a completely nonsensical comparison to make.

As for Norway, yes, it's fairly close to being socialist, by American standards (it's actually nowhere near socialist, since the government isn't in control of the economy any more than America's is). And they outperform America on almost all measures, including education, health, workforce participation, social equality, financial equality, crime rate (lower, that is), and happiness. Perhaps you should stop getting hung up on terms that aren't even being accurately applied, and instead look into the nations we're talking about before dismissing them.

5. So what you're saying is that the time limit is a patch on a hole left by your state government? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply make the conditions more rigorous? Unemployment fraud isn't solved by putting a time limit on it. Indeed, all it does is punish those who legitimately are having trouble finding work. Those who are intent on defrauding the system will find a way around something as trivial as a time limit.

6. I'm not going to continue arguing over the semantics. I'll just emphasise that it's not fascist, and "fascist-like" is really just a weak way to say "fascism, but not quite as bad as real fascism". So my concern was more for the implication than the term itself. Choice of words can have a significant effect on the implicit meaning of something, even when explicitly it's the same thing.

What do you want the poor to pay taxes with? Their rent money or their food money?

The reason the wealthy are taxed higher is because they are paid way more money than poor people and being taxed higher just means 1 new BMWs this year instead of 2, and a few ounces less cocaine per fiscal quarter.

Most wealthy people aren't living off their pay cheque anyway, they are living off their capital gains.

1. It's not as if we don't have healthcare, and I know from experience that poor people won't "die" ,because we've got the option of medicaid. I'm talking about perfectly healthy, middle-class people who feel that the risks are nowhere near the cost and hence opt out. Poor people don't have to pay the fine, it's only the middle class (and upper class - but they'll have healthcare anyway) who do. And they're the ones least likely to want or need healthcare. As for individual rights, the more power the government has over the economy in all fields enables them to manipulate the system more easily. Just look at the banking system since the federal reserve. It's a huge mess.

2.  "Seems like a solution " in reference to Obamacare is hardly "I like this system." 

3.  It is quite naive to think that our politicians properly represent the people and are as efficient in enabling and securing the rights of the people, nor that a federal government ecompassing 300 million can address all the concerns of such people. Hence, why states take precedence. As for education, all effots by the federal government to reform it have indeed been failures and a waste of money, money which could've remained in taxpayers pockets to fund their children's educational needs or put back into the economy. Places like Hong Kong, Japan, and Finland have the top students in the world, yet they spend far less on education than our federal government as a percentage of GDP, and do note that state and local governments spend here on education as well.   Education is so much easier to control locally and statually anyway. There are different considerations and approaches that must be taken based on regional differences, as the U.S is hardly homogenous. 

More than half of Americans are disatisfied with Congress. The example you gave about railroads would fall under private corporations here in the U.S, but since it involves interstate commerce then if  it were public, it'd be something under the control of the Federal government (in cooperation with the state governments.) The federal government has no business in the affairs within the states and including the affairs of individuals. Also if a state government makes a mistake they're by far more accountable to the people than if the federal government makes a mistake. However; all of this discussion has been done again and again since the origin of the country. Federalism is still important, and the balance of powers is still important. One example of state governments losing representation and hence power, for example, was the change of electing the senate of the United States from the state legislatures  to the people voting. This makes the system far more democratic, and mob-rule like and enables the individual rights of others from different states to be influenced negatively or positively. It seems a bit too static to think that sociological changes won't affect individual rights. And no, I blame the federal government for taking away OUR ability to do things for people and replacing it with their poor system. They take away our choices and options, those which the private industry use to provide or the state governments can provide more efficiently.

30% of Norway's workforce is public; only 4% is public in the United States. That's a HUGE difference. 

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

"The economy of Norway is a developed mixed economy with heavy state-ownership in strategic areas of the economy."

Not to say we can't learn from Norway, but certainly there are different starting points here. Also, there should be as much innovation, if not more, as there is copying. It seems ridiculous to tell people to look at other countries and not solve problems based on the internal issues of the system they're looking at.  For example, 30 years ago the United States was considered the most egalitarian country in the world, by economy. Now that's hardly true. So certainly we can look at our own history first and decide things from that. I don't think copying other countries is the solution, especially when they're not free from the global recession either, just less damage than the United States.

4. These things you cited make up a very small portion of the spending though, and a larger economy based around these things shouldn't have such a huge increase in spending as a percentage of the whole. It shows that either the government influence is inhibiting the economy, or that the government is less efficient in its spending. Let's not even mention that the spending is increasing at an accelerated rate, and the proposed cuts for the fiscal cliff were on its increase, lol.  Furthermore, the U.S spends more as a percentage of the total GDP than socialist China.   And China is a developing country whose government would likely spend more on infrastructure and huge projects that they must complete. 

5. Can you support this with empirical evidence? All evidence I've seen is that most people are able to and have gotten jobs within the six months because they had no other choice. Otherwise they would have just stayed on welfare, of course this is anecdotal evidence and not empirical, but I'd like to see empirical evidence which supports your claim, as it was your claim. 

6. Very well, I'll just call it corporate statism then. 

And the middle class small business owners? What about them? 

1. You don't seem to be understanding. The middle class implicitly get health coverage for emergencies. It's one of the services that the government has to provide. The alternative would be to have, as I said, death panels, members of which have the job of determining whether a person would be capable of paying for the life-saving procedure that they require in the emergency situation. You can't just turn them away for lack of insurance, because they may actually be willing and able to pay, and you'd be condemning them to death. The alternative is to cover them anyway but not require them to pay (which is what was happening before obamacare). The whole point of the fine is to say "you have to be covered, one way or another, because there's no other way to run it rationally. So buy private insurance, or we'll make you pay for public insurance".

And I'd ask for evidence (even anecdotal evidence) of the government actually infringing on individual liberties through manipulation of the economy. Except perhaps for the whole police state issue America has, where the government works with prison companies to fill up prisons with inmates - but then, that's a corruption issue, and Americans should be tossing out anyone who supports this system.

2. Oh, I'm sorry - I thought you meant that you felt that it was a good solution.

3. I think that Americans are too caught up in the idea that politicians don't serve the people - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't place "serving the people" at the top position on your list of requirements for politicians, then of course you're going to get that sort of corruption going on. Part of the problem, by the way, is your two-party system. Most other western nations, where corruption is lower than it is in the US, have a multi-party system. Australia's system is probably closest to America's, with one major party and one major coalition that acts almost like one party... and then the Greens party, which is growing in size within the government, because our system isn't rigged against new parties.

And you keep emphasising how important it is that states retain more control, because state-level control is better than federal control... aren't a number of American states currently going bankrupt? It's my understanding that states are actually doing worse than the federal government, on the whole, but I could be mistaken.

As for education, you need to stop thinking in black-and-white terms - especially in correlation of funding and control. The federal government should have some control of education, if only to ensure that states actually teach science in science class and things like that. Beyond that, the federal government can ensure a minimum amount of spending on education, so that states can't skimp on the education of children in order to send more money to <insert inappropriate money sink here>. And there seems to be this strange idea in America that states and federal government can't work together - Australia doesn't have this concept. How about having states work with federal government on a national curriculum, where each state can either opt into the curriculum or go it alone. This curriculum would include detailed instructions regarding essential fields like mathematics and english (which really shouldn't vary by state), and then having a more adaptable, guideline type curriculum for things that may vary. Although, I'm also curious - what sort of education is more important in, say, New York than Nebraska, such that the curriculum should be different? I honestly don't get that.

More than half of Americans are dissatisfied with Congress, true. Mostly because Congress hasn't been doing anything of substance. The majority of Americans support most of the things that actually got done, like obamacare, etc. But Republicans are dragging their feet on just about everything, Democrats are failing to stand up for anything, and because of America's system, there's nobody else there (except for a few select independents) to raise the standard. And if Congress, or the government in general, is setting up their systems poorly, then kick the bastards out and elect a new government that will do a better job. Also, again, I fail to see how more localisation helps to fix this problem - it just multiplies it out, as you get greater duplication of effort.

Your stats on public workforce are inaccurate, by the way. Norway's percentage is, indeed, nearly 30% - in September 2011, it was 29.25%... but the US's percentage is not 4%. That is the percentage of Americans who work for the government, not the percentage of the workforce. The percentage of the workforce is actually 16.42%. And that number would actually be lower if you shifted more of your government up to the federal level, because again, localisation causes duplication of effort.

4. Medicare and Medicaid, making up 19%, is part of healthcare, let's say it's dropped by two thirds to represent the much weaker healthcare situation at the time (thereby removing 12% from spending). There was no social security 100 years ago, so there's 20% completely removed (at the expense of the elderly... who were also much lower in number). America's army was much more low-tech back then, too, so let's say that Defense is dropped by half, another 12% down. Already, we're down 42%, just by factoring in the differences between 100 years ago and today in terms of the big-ticket items. And of course, your statistic was regarding total government spending, not federal government spending - local and state governments would be spending much more on things that wouldn't have applied 100 years ago.

Meanwhile, spending is not increasing at an accelerating rate. It might have been, four years ago, when you look at spending in the early part of the GFC and the resulting recession, but that was a temporary thing.

Blue is "Transfer to state and local" - I assume that means it's the amount that the federal government gives to state and local governments, and thus would be marked as federal spending on the books, but isn't really being "spent" at that point. Red is Federal spending, Green is State spending, Grey is Local spending. Notice the downward trend from 2009 onwards. It was only growing exponentially between 2007 and 2009, as the GFC hit. Now, it could be said to be true that it is growing exponentially in dollar terms, but that's an unfair comparison, because inflation needs to be taken into account.

And of course the US spends more than China. China is socialist, when they want a road built, they instruct their road-building company to build it, they don't pay for contractors. It's America's corporate system that explains why it has to pay more than China.

5. Empirical evidence isn't what I was basing the statement on. Logic combined with knowledge of human behaviour is more than sufficient. But let's start here: there are two types of welfare fraud - fraud where the recipient makes false or incomplete claims, and fraud where someone within the system is knowingly giving welfare to someone ineligible. The former is what we're concerned with, here, and is by far the more common form. If a person is going to lie about unemployment status and things like that to gain benefits, why would they be honest enough to let the situation arise in which those benefits are completely cancelled? It's the honest people who get shafted.

So basically they passed all of the tax increases and postponed the spending cuts?

Hooray, worst of both worlds.

*sees terrifyingly long and detailed posts above and leaves*

They didn't pass "all of the tax increases" at all. I suggest you check up on what was actually done.

Leaves? I don't see any leaves. *looks around* could do with a few plants, though.