The next thing you know the government is going to be handing cash out for horrible financial decisions. Oh, wait...

This is the kind of stuff that happens when you live in a culture that refuses to accept the bad with the good.

Ah well. Hopefully we'll prolong enough to where the problems will be our kids... or our kids kids problems.

Because I don't have, nor want kids.

I don't know how to feel about this just yet. I need therealmafoo's opinion so i can pick the opposite of it.

Why stop there?

Cash for Babies!

You bring in your kid and the government will give you $4500 for the little tike.  Don't worry, he'll become a government slave used to pay down the enormous debt!  Really its a win-win - you get money and the national debt goes down!

But what will all the rich people eat?

lol.

Ever heard the joke where you first ask a woman "would you sleep with me for 10 million dollars?", and when she says yes, you then say "so we now know your a whore, we just need to negotiate on price".

Let's say we were to give people a million each to buy a home. Would that be a bad idea? I think everyone would say yes.

Now that we know giving money to people is bad, we are just negotiating price at this point.

Taking peoples money, so you can give other people money to buy things, is a bad idea. Regardless of the price.

@TheRealMafoo.

Would you shoot somebody to save the planet? If you say yes, then you're a killer - we just need to negotiate the stakes.

Thats the problem with the fallacy of extension. You're extending the idea past what it actually is and then attacking your idea, not the actual one. Its a straw man argument.


In any case I don't actually agree with this idea overall, I feel the current bailouts have gone far enough and the economy is recovering at this point. The current American deficit is very high and I think the money is better saved than spent at this point. Oh and taxes, you Americans are definitely going to need to pay quite a lot more taxes once the economy has recovered more fully.

Is the standard dependent deduction that high? Damn, then that is a good deal. I thought each dependent child was only around 3500 exemption (of course that's not how much one "Saves" on taxes). With these kind of tax breaks one would think the US is trying to encourage a population boom.

Of course I am a killer, provided the circumstances lead me to kill (in a war, stopping an armed robbery, whatever).

The argument holds true. The only place it doesn't, is I would have a hard time killing someone to save the planet, if that person had done nothing wrong.

The cash for clunkers program, when all said and done, will cost of 2-3 billion dollars. Will we every see a return on that money, and if not, why was it a good thing?

Better yet, let's wait 6 months and see what it did to the auto industry, and I will ask you again. The next 6 months will not be pretty.

Wow, really? Only 2-3 billion dollars? The government practically wipes its ass with a couple billion dollars these days.