 KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| Weaponizing Budget Deficit for political gain "The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?
The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.
For the fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price. "
---- PAUL KRUGMAN
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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| Tragic situation 19 inchs of snow in D.C.!!!!
Frakin' gridlock out the wazoo!!!!!!
Yeah! Then can't FSCK anything up until the snow melts... |
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approval from:
fAcEtIOUs 
| reply to KrK
What is missing from this (and most) discussions about taxes and deficits are two points. First, there is no linear relationship between tax rates and taxes collected. The relationship is bell curved. If you tax too heavily, the activity that is taxed will diminish to a point where less revenue is taken in. Liberals think of the world as static. They think that I will stand still while they shoot at me, but I won't. I will duck and dodge, and adapt (anyone hear of offshoreing). Secondly, apparent fairness in a tax is crucial to it's acceptance. We drive on potholed roads, watch our schools crumble, see old folks who worked until they couldn't any more go hungry, all the while the self selected poverty class "leeches" live better than the majority of people in the world without a lifting a finger, politicians build monuments to themselves with little or no public benefit, and in general, most tax dollars are used for things I do not agree with. I would be less inclined to duck and dodge, and would more easily accept higher taxes if I agreed with how the majority of taxes were used. |
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KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK Reviews:
·AT&T DSL Service
| This is why we're in this mess, tho. Nobody can agree what should be cut, and nobody wants their agenda or ideology to suffer--- so the cuts must come from the other side.
Results? Our politicians just spend money on everything. Which we can't afford.
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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