GOP and Tea BAggers to force government shutdown
- Thread starter Mission Accomplished
- Start date
First, the original post is so over-the-top it really looks like parody.
I always fin the preference for inefficient private-sector subsidized drizzle over inefficient government subsidized drivel to be curious. At least with government version, we have more of a say.
You mean, like jobs in banking, insurance, accounting, investments, etc. are cushy jobs that produce nothing?
I always fin the preference for inefficient private-sector subsidized drizzle over inefficient government subsidized drivel to be curious. At least with government version, we have more of a say.
You mean, like jobs in banking, insurance, accounting, investments, etc. are cushy jobs that produce nothing?
In particular, which of the programs by Planned parenthood that are federally funded do yo think should be cut? Comprehensive sex education? Contraceptive distribution?
I have to agree with this. I actually don't produce a damn thing.
Initial tax rate or effective tax rate? Due to the huge number of credits/deductions, we have one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the Western world.
So, cutting a tax rate from 10% to 5% of costs would keep them from cutting labor from 40% to 20% of costs?
Do you think all was peaches and cream for the elderly before the 30s? Here's one thing: you can never lose every penny of your Social Security money investing with companies controlled by a modern-day James Fisk or Bernie Madoff. You may think your'e too clever to be conned, and perhaps you are, but many people are not. Here's another: no matter what sort of medical expenses, litigation, or other tyes of unplanned expenses drain your current savings, you will be able to rent and buy food, meagerly.
Perhaps its not particularly concerning to you that people used to starve to death in our country or commit suicide rather than face a future with no savings and little ability to earn more.
While it doesn't pay interest specifically, depending on your earnings and marital status, it's easy enought o receive double what you put in, or half.
They needed at least one "yeah" in the Senate. Still, I agree this should have been possible before the election.
Armageddon will be a cake walk. This is serious!
I don't actually agree with that generally (I have no specific in formation on you in particular, but suspect you do produce feelings of safety and confidence). It was just to point out the disconnect in the reasoning used by Marcus in that post.
What part of Planned Parenthood should be defunded did you not understand? If you still don't understand, not a penny should be given to PP from the government.
You didn't answer my question. Why is it the federal governments responsibility to provide retirement payments?
Kind of like your disconnect in fear mongering average Americans with "Bernie Madoff will steal your savings" hysteria? Ya know, the average American who didn't have 1/100th of enough to be a "qualified investor", let alone even get Madoff's attention in on a ski slope? GTFOOH. Benjamin Graham (among a zillion others) killed your ******** over half a decade ago.
There is no plane in any universe where 'Fat Trainer' Marcus is anywhere in the same realm of your level of psychosis.
Just one more example of Big Fundy scaring the middle class as a way to protect the ultra-wealthy--like Madoff investors. First she advocates paying Chevron so they can pad profit margins by pumping more oil, now she's scaring you out of an ownership society by promoting the usual ultra-rich protectionist agenda.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to LogGrad98 again.
This is definitely my kind of post. Loved it.
First off, let me state where I'm coming from here.
The whole thing is a sideshow. Nothing the GOP is proposing is a real meaningful cut. Even if they cut $100 billion it wouldn't be substantial enough in budgetary terms to have any real long term impact. Both sides are so caught up in arguing over an exceedingly small portion of the budget that there aren't any real discussions of how to fix the real long-term cost-growers in the budget.
All that being said, it is not a reasonable position to say that the imminent federal government shutdown is really about long-term or short-term solvency because even if the GOP got everything they wanted plus 100% more it wouldn't make a dent on those issues. Instead it is, once again, about cutting things they don't like. That's why the focus over the last two months has been on Planned Parenthood, NPR, and other social programs that conservatives have never liked. This is a method of spinning long waged ideological wars into a battle over fiscal responsibility. If you've bought that spin, then you deserve who you vote for.
This is a very curious claim, given that you can't possibly know about future tax cuts in all competing countries with similar top nominal tax rates (for example Japan), nor could you possibly be accounting for variations between state tax rates when making this claim. As a result, I presume you are merely parroting a talking point of questionable veracity.
Second, I think you're either unaware of, or purposely ignoring, the actual effective tax rates paid by American corporations. Last week there was a big to-do over GE actually receiving a tax credit on its earnings rather than paying real taxes. The example is extreme but illustrative that not every corporation is paying a straight percentage. For example previous studies have shown that once all factors are taken into account, the US' corporate tax rates are quite low when compared to other developed economies (this distinction is actually important, as non-first world countries tend to have hidden tax systems in the forms of bribery or protection costs in black markets). See this CBO study undertaken in 2005 for example that compared Taxes on Corporate Income in the US vs. other countries.
https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf
Page 27 of the 60 page PDF helpfully provides a table expressing corporate taxation as a percentage of each countries GDP (providing a rough estimate of how much relative money is sucked out of the system by the government). The numbers are from 2002 but the US top corporate tax rate is unchanged and the conclusions remain largely the same. Comparing the US to other OECD reveals that only Iceland and Germany enjoyed lower effective corporate tax rates relative to the size of their economies.
No it's about costs (labor) and benefits (the willingness of less developed countries to tolerate corporate bad acts).
Health Care costs are significantly greater drivers of future costs than Social Security.
As to Social Security itself, I suggest you take a hard look at why the system sprung up in the first place. I think we are far enough separated from the era in which social security was created that people seem to have forgotten the impetus for its creation. The lives of the elderly prior to the advent of social security were not pretty. Private saving and investment didn't solve that then, and there is little evidence that it would solve it now.
Disagree in the sense that it portrays the previous Democratic Congress as United. This is a party with a very complex "base" that has to unite Union longshoreman in Baltimore with homosexual activists in San Francisco. The 2009 Democratic party might not have been able to pass a budget if there were 100 Democrats in the Senate due to filibuster/cloture rules.
I do think the GOP and Tea Party faction have been specifically gearing up for this for quite some time. It's not totally insane to believe there is some engineering behind the process.
You and I seem to be the only people in the country that realize the US is still #1 in manufacturing in the world.
Co-sign, but disagree with the rest. Not a discussion for general board consumption though.
After adding Franklin, way to make this 5 to 1 ideologically in your counting.
The whole thing is a sideshow. Nothing the GOP is proposing is a real meaningful cut. Even if they cut $100 billion it wouldn't be substantial enough in budgetary terms to have any real long term impact. Both sides are so caught up in arguing over an exceedingly small portion of the budget that there aren't any real discussions of how to fix the real long-term cost-growers in the budget.
All that being said, it is not a reasonable position to say that the imminent federal government shutdown is really about long-term or short-term solvency because even if the GOP got everything they wanted plus 100% more it wouldn't make a dent on those issues. Instead it is, once again, about cutting things they don't like. That's why the focus over the last two months has been on Planned Parenthood, NPR, and other social programs that conservatives have never liked. This is a method of spinning long waged ideological wars into a battle over fiscal responsibility. If you've bought that spin, then you deserve who you vote for.
This is a very curious claim, given that you can't possibly know about future tax cuts in all competing countries with similar top nominal tax rates (for example Japan), nor could you possibly be accounting for variations between state tax rates when making this claim. As a result, I presume you are merely parroting a talking point of questionable veracity.
Second, I think you're either unaware of, or purposely ignoring, the actual effective tax rates paid by American corporations. Last week there was a big to-do over GE actually receiving a tax credit on its earnings rather than paying real taxes. The example is extreme but illustrative that not every corporation is paying a straight percentage. For example previous studies have shown that once all factors are taken into account, the US' corporate tax rates are quite low when compared to other developed economies (this distinction is actually important, as non-first world countries tend to have hidden tax systems in the forms of bribery or protection costs in black markets). See this CBO study undertaken in 2005 for example that compared Taxes on Corporate Income in the US vs. other countries.
https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf
Page 27 of the 60 page PDF helpfully provides a table expressing corporate taxation as a percentage of each countries GDP (providing a rough estimate of how much relative money is sucked out of the system by the government). The numbers are from 2002 but the US top corporate tax rate is unchanged and the conclusions remain largely the same. Comparing the US to other OECD reveals that only Iceland and Germany enjoyed lower effective corporate tax rates relative to the size of their economies.
Marcus said:
No it's about costs (labor) and benefits (the willingness of less developed countries to tolerate corporate bad acts).
Marcus said:
Health Care costs are significantly greater drivers of future costs than Social Security.
As to Social Security itself, I suggest you take a hard look at why the system sprung up in the first place. I think we are far enough separated from the era in which social security was created that people seem to have forgotten the impetus for its creation. The lives of the elderly prior to the advent of social security were not pretty. Private saving and investment didn't solve that then, and there is little evidence that it would solve it now.
Disagree in the sense that it portrays the previous Democratic Congress as United. This is a party with a very complex "base" that has to unite Union longshoreman in Baltimore with homosexual activists in San Francisco. The 2009 Democratic party might not have been able to pass a budget if there were 100 Democrats in the Senate due to filibuster/cloture rules.
I do think the GOP and Tea Party faction have been specifically gearing up for this for quite some time. It's not totally insane to believe there is some engineering behind the process.
Franklin said:
You and I seem to be the only people in the country that realize the US is still #1 in manufacturing in the world.
Co-sign, but disagree with the rest. Not a discussion for general board consumption though.
After adding Franklin, way to make this 5 to 1 ideologically in your counting.
Kicky said:
Again, I have to ask, why is this considered to be the governments responsibility? Nobody will answer this question. All I keep hearing is how bad old people would have it if SS did not exist. Take into account that it will likely be insolvent by the time I retire in 20 years it seems like a dog with fleas that needs to be put out its misery. Why perpetuate it?
Hantlers
Well-Known Member
You want to have an adult conversation when so far most of argument is calling the GOP and other conservatives idiots and other stuff? I'm not totally sure you know what an adult conversation is.
After adding Franklin, way to make this 5 to 1 ideologically in your counting.
Smaller words please. There is a reason I don't post anything of substance in threads like this (or the board, for that matter), and it's because I'm dumb.
This is a philosophical position that you have taken regarding the primacy of the individual. As a practical matter, purely divorced from philosophical concerns, if the government doesn't do it then it simply doesn't get done. Some people are rich enough that's not a problem. Others are lucky enough to make out ok from private services for which there is more demand than supply. Others (very few) are responsible enough to have totally saved their whole lives and accurately forecasted their future costs. Everyone else gets ****ed.
To bring the philosophy component back into it, this comes down to whether or not widespread suffering and human misery are acceptable outcomes to you personally as a result of a failure to take care of the elderly. If you (like me) do not regard that as acceptable then government is the only way the problem gets solved.
Careful with those talking points. The death of Social Security has been widely forecasted for decades and is always put off, either by legislative action or economic reality. Even if the entire SS trust fund were depleted the consequences would NOT be no benefits paid out to retirees, but instead reduced benefits paid to retirees. Thus claimed insolvency is not what you're thinking of, where you will pay in your whole life and receive nothing because the program will no longer exist.
In essence that makes your argument, to steal a Krugman-ism, "we should cut Social Security now to prevent future Social Security benefit cuts later." Not the brightest policy choice.
Gonna defend your tax rate claims, or are you calling uncle on those?
So, you're in favor of defunding mammograms.
You're in favor of defunding providing contraception for women who can't afford it.
You're in favor of defunding prenatal care to women who have no other access to a doctor.
You're in favor of defunding sex education.
However, you don't really care about abortion at Planned Parenthood, because since all abortions are privately funded at Planned Parenthood, defunding it won't touch that program. In fact, without access to good contraceptives, abortions provided by Planned Parenthood will go up.
At least, those are the consequences of your position.
If the governemnt doesn't, the poverty rates and suicide rates among the elderly will go up significantly. I guess that still doesn't make it their responsibility, necessarily, but reducing the rates of pverty and suicide among the elderly is an outcome most people support.
Since Madoff has been stopped, it would be silly to use him, in particular, as a threat. James Fisk is even less of a rsik, since he died over 100 years ago. If only, if only, I had referred to something like "a modern-day James Fisk or Bernie Madoff", instead of saying the actual people were the threats.
Who is this "she" that advocated paying Chevron in order to enable them to pump more oil? If you mean me, I'm insulted (not by the pronoun, but by the idea I would think it's necessary to pay people to do what's profitable).
Insolvent still means payouts at 70-75% of the traditional value (at just about the time I'm going to be retiring, so this affects me directly). It's still better than rank poverty. It is not the case that the checks will simply stop.
I think you are overplaying the whole widespread suffering and human misery angle. In 1934 when SS was passed the suffering and misery was a direct result of the Great Depression. Before then the elderly either continued to work or lived with relatives or friends. The GD made finding work for the elderly much more difficult and made it difficult for relatives to take care of older loved ones. Once the GD passed SS would have been entirely unnecessary again for the most part. As with any government entitlement however, once put into place it can't be taken back.
The 1930's census showed that 58% of men over 65 still worked. By 2002 that figure dropped to 18%. It's likely even lower today. The federal government is essentially paying the elderly not to work. Of course there would be mass hysteria and rioting if people over 65 were told they simply had to keep working.
Right now the cost of administrating SS is as high as 328,000,000,000.00 That's billions. SS paid out 439 billion in benefits. Roughly speaking, for every four dollars paid out society as a whole bears up to a 3 dollar adminstration cost.
Imagine putting more money in every single worker's pocket as well as cutting 320 billion from the budget. At the very least SS should give workers the choice of opting out if the don't want to participate. Of course they can never do that because the government desperately needs every dollar they can get to keep the sinking ship afloat.
Give me a few... trying to work as well.